These fine sentiments were wasted upon Innocent, who looked up at him wondering, and received what he said docilely, but made no attempt to understand. I don’t know why Frederick, knowing her well enough to be aware of this, should have thought it necessary to make so solemn a statement. He did it, perhaps, from the habit he had acquired of posing as a victim to honour. He led her about the Minster, and showed her many things which Innocent looked at with her usual docility, pleased to be with him, if not much excited by anything else. She had been happy at the High Lodge, but after all Frederick was her first friend, her discovery, and to be thus alone with him, cared for by him, no one else interfering, carried her back to the first startled awakening of her torpid youth. He was always kind to her when she was thus thrown upon his care, and Innocent was happy, with her hand clinging to his arm. When Miss Vane came to recall her to the present, she looked with perhaps a warmer personal wish than had ever been seen in her eyes before at her temporary guardian, pleading for the granting of the request which Frederick made, with his very finest Charles I. look, and melancholy gentlemanlike grace. Miss Vane, a busy woman, had partially forgotten her brother’s warning about Mrs. Frederick. She knew the young man before her had made a very foolish marriage, but still he was an Eastwood, of prepossessing appearance, and a compunction crossed her mind as to her want of civility in not “calling on” the daughter-in-law of Innocent’s good aunt. A woman takes rank from her husband, not from her father, Miss Vane reflected, and if this poor fellow had found out, as might be guessed from his resigned manner, that he had made a terrible mistake, it was only right that a connexion should stand by him as far as was practicable. After a few difficulties, therefore, as to Innocent’s dress, &c., she consented, promising to send the gardener with her bag, and to drive in for her on Monday morning, “when I will take the opportunity of leaving a card for Mrs. Eastwood. I am sorry to hear she is so poorly,” said Miss Vane in her most gracious manner. Innocent could scarcely believe it when she saw her energetic relation drive away, and found herself left in Frederick’s charge. “I am to stay, then?” she said, with a smile which lighted up her whole face; then added, with a faint shadow stealing over it, “but with you, Frederick? I do not like--your wife----” “You shall be with me,” said Frederick; “but, Innocent, you must not say such things. It is imprudent--you might be misunderstood. I know very well what you mean, and that, of course, it is impossible you should feel towards poor Amanda as you do to me; but you must not forget what I have told you so often, that a woman’s best policy is always to make friends with her own sex. You are coming now, you understand, to visit my wife, who is far from well; but I shall take care to have you a great deal with me.”