"Well! there's a question for a sensible woman!" cried my aunt, not seeing the sarcasm: then turning to me, she welcomed me with a cordial kiss; but I was struck by the great coldness with which she greeted Seymour. My uncle, however, received us both with the kindest manner possible. But I forgave all her oddness, when she saw my child; for praise of her child always finds its way to a mother's heart; and she was in raptures with its beauty. She pitied me too for being forced to give her up to a nurse; but she added, "I hope she is not, to use the words of the bard, a 'Stern rugged nurse, with rigid lore, Our patience many a year to bore.'" Then renewing her caresses and her praises, she banished from my remembrance for a while all but her affectionate heart. At dinner, however, she restored to me my fears of her, and my dislike to her visit; for she called my husband Mr. Seymour Pendarves at every word, though my mother she called Julia, and me Helen;--wishing, as I saw, to point out to every one that _he_ was not in her good graces. But why? Alas! I doubted not but I should hear too soon; and, feeling myself a coward, I carefully avoided being alone with her that evening. What she had to tell I knew not, and whether it regarded Charlotte Jermyn or Lady Bell; but I summoned up resolution to ask Pendarves whether he had ever visited Lady Bell Singleton in company with Lord Charles; and without hesitation, though with great confusion, he owned that he had. "What! more than once?" "Yes." "Why did you not tell me of it?" "Because I thought, after what you had heard, it might make you uneasy." "Should you ever do," I replied, forcing a smile, "what in our relative situation it would make me uneasy to be informed of?" "Not if your uneasiness would be at all well founded." "But concealment implies consciousness of something indiscreet, if not wrong; and had you told me yourself of your visits to Lady Bell, I could have set Mrs. Pendarves and her insinuations at defiance." "And can you not now?" "Perhaps so; but no thanks to your ingenuousness. However, I must own," said I, smiling affectionately, "that no one answers questions more readily." I had judged rightly in preparing myself for my encounter with Mrs. Pendarves, as she took the first opportunity of telling me how much she pitied me: for she had heard of the affair with the young lady who came to nurse me in my lying in, which was of a piece with the renewal of intercourse with Lady Bell Singleton. "But I assure you," she added, "his uncle means to tell him a piece of his mind; and if he does not, I will."