"You are mistaken," replied Christian, gravely; "I found this out by the merest accident; and as I can not allow the child to do the same thing again, I thought it the most honest course to tell you at once of the discovery I made, and receive your explanations." "You can't get them; I have a perfect right to walk with whom I please?" "Most certainly; but not to take Dr. Grey's little daughter with you as a companion. Don't you see, Miss Bennett"--feeling sorry for the shame and pain she fancied she must be inflicting--"how injurious these sort of proceedings must be to a little girl, who ought to know nothing about love at all--(pardon my concluding this is a love affair)--till she comes to it seriously, earnestly, and at a fitting age? And then the deception, underhandedness--can not you see how wrong it was to make secret appointments with a child, and induce her to steal out of the house unknown to both nurse and mother?" "You are not her own mother, Mrs. Grey, it don't affect you." "Pardon me," returned Christian very distantly, as she perceived her delicacy was altogether wasted upon this impertinent young woman, who appeared well able to hold her own under any circumstances, "it does affect me so much that, deeply as I shall regret it, I must offer you a check for your three months' salary. Your engagement, I believe, was quarterly, and I must beg of you to consider it canceled." Miss Bennett turned red and pale; the offensive tone sank into one pitifully weak and cringing. "Oh, Mrs. Grey! don't be hard upon me; I'm a poor governess, doing my best, and father has a large family of us, and the shop isn't as thriving as it was. Don't turn me away, and I'll never meet the young fellow again." There was a little natural feeling visible through the ultra-humility of the girl's manner, and when she took out a coarse but elaborately laced pocket-handkerchief, and wept upon it abundantly, Christian's heart melted. "I am very sorry for you--very sorry indeed; but what can I do? Will you tell me candidly, are you engaged to this gentleman?" "No, not exactly; but I am sure I shall be by-and-by." "He is your lover, then? he ought to be, if, as Letitia says, you go walking together every evening." "Well, and if I do, it's nobody's business but my own, I suppose; and it's very hard it should lose me my situation." So it was. Mrs. Grey remembered her own "young days," as she now called them--remembered them with pity rather than shame; for she had done nothing wrong. She had deceived no one, only been herself deceived--in a very harmless fashion, just because, in her foolish, innocent heart, which knew nothing of the world and the world's wiles, she thought no man would ever be so mean, so cowardly, as to tell a girl he loved her unless he meant it in the true, noble, knightly way--a lover "Who loved one woman, and who clave to her"