"So I supposed, since I and the children met him on the way to Avonside." In this world, so full of shams, bow utterly bewildering sometimes is the direct innocent truth! At this answer of Christian's Miss Gascoigne looked more amazed than if she had been told a dozen lies. "Was that the reason you turned back and went home?" "Partly; I really had forgotten something which Dr. Grey wanted, but I also wished to avoid meeting your visitor." "Why so?" "Surely you must guess. How can I voluntarily meet any one who is not a friend of my husband's?" "Not though he may have been a friend of your own? For, as I understand, you once had a very close acquaintance with Sir Edwin Uniacke." The thrust was so unexpected, unmistakable in its meaning, that Christian, in her startled surprise, said the very worst thing she could have said to the malicious ears which were held open to every thing and eager to misconstrue every thing, "Who told you that?" "Told me! Why all Avonsbridge is talking about it, and about you." This was a lie--a little white lie; one of those small exaggerations of which people make no account; but Christian believed it, and it seemed to wrap her round as with a cold mist of fear. All Avonsbridge talking of her--her, Dr. Grey's wife, who had his honor as well as her own in her keeping--talking about herself and Sir Edwin Uniacke! What? how much? how had the tale come about? how could it be met? With a sudden instinct of self-preservation, she forcibly summoned back her composure. She knew with whom she had to deal. She must guard every look, every word. "Will you tell me. Miss Gascoigne, exactly who is talking about me, and what they say? I am sure I have never given occasion for it." "Never? Are you quite certain of that?" "Quite certain. Who said I had 'a very close acquaintance'--were not these your words--with Sir Edwin Uniacke?" "Himself." "Himself!" Then Christian recognized the whole amount of her difficulty--nay, her danger; for she was in the power, not of a gentleman, but of a villain. Any man must have been such who, under the circumstances, could have boasted of their former acquaintance, or even referred to it at all. "Kiss and tell?" runs the disdainful proverb. And even the worldliest of men, in their low code of honor, count the thing base and ignoble. Alas! all women do not. In the strangely mistaken code of feminine "honorable-ness," it is deemed no disgrace for a woman to chatter and boast of a man's love, but the utmost disgrace for her to own or feel on her side any love at all. But Christian was unlike her sex in some things. To her, with her creed of love, it would have appeared far less mean, less cowardly, less dishonorable, openly to confess, "I loved this man," than to betray "This man loved me." And it was with almost contemptuous indignation that she repeated, "What! he told it himself?"