“Explanation!” cried John. “Do you think I could ask, or she condescend to give, what you call explanations? She knew her own honor and purity; and she knew,” he added with a long-drawn breath, “that I knew them as well as she--” “Still,” said Rivers, “explanations are necessary when it is brought before the public.” “It shall never be brought before the public!” “My dear Trevanion! How then are you to do anything, how set the will aside?” This question silenced John; and it took further speech out of the mouth of his companion, who felt, on his side, that if he were about to be connected with the Trevanion family, it would not be at all desirable, on any consideration, that this story should become public. He had been full of interest in the woman whose appearance had struck him before he knew anything about her, and who had figured so largely in his first acquaintance with Rosalind. But when it became a question of a great scandal occupying every mind and tongue, and in which it was possible his own wife might be concerned--that was a very different matter. In a great family such things are treated with greater case. If it is true that an infringement on their honor, a blot on the scutcheon, is supposed to be of more importance where there is a noble scutcheon to tarnish, it is yet true that a great family history would lose much of its interest if it were not crossed now and then by a shadow of darkness, a tale to make the hearers shudder; and that those who are accustomed to feel themselves always objects of interest to the world bear the shame of an occasional disclosure far better than those sprung from a lowlier level whose life is sacred to themselves, and who guard their secrets far more jealously than either the great or the very small. Rivers, in the depth of his nature, which was not that of a born patrician, trembled at the thought of public interference in the affairs of a family with which he should be connected. All the more that it would be an honor and elevation to him to be connected with it, he trembled to have its secrets published. It was not till after he had given his advice on the subject that this drawback occurred to him. He was not a bad man, to doom another to suffer that his own surroundings might go free; but when he thought of it he resolved that, if he could bring it about, Rosalind’s enthusiasm should be calmed down, and she should learn to feel for her stepmother only that calm affection which stepmothers at the best are worthy of, and which means separation rather than unity of interests. He pondered this during the latter part of the way with great abstraction of thought. He was very willing to take advantage of his knowledge of Mrs. Trevanion, and of the importance it gave him to be their only means of communication with her; but further than this he did not mean to go. Were Rosalind once his, there should certainly be no room in his house for a stepmother of blemished fame.