had not known such profanation from the time of the Jameses. Talk of the whaling captain, indeed, who had vitiated the blood of the Morrisons! perhaps it was a judgment upon Mr. Charles for his remarks on that flaw; for this was a thousand times worse than any whaling captain. And yet while he groaned over the prospective humiliation, he afflicted his soul at the same time with thoughts of how he was to manage Mrs. Charles and her impertinent sister, who took so much upon her, and yet was not so much as related to the Heriots. The one misery was incompatible with the other; but yet he took the good, or rather the evil, of them both. The existence of this doubting, questioning, perplexed, and perplexing companion by her side was no addition to Marjory’s comfort. She postponed her visit to the cottage for motives which she scarcely ventured to define--foremost among which was a vague reluctance to meet Agnes again, and to discuss with her the work which she had taken out of her hands. In every such enterprise there comes a moment of discouragement, of painful difficulty, of disgust even, with circumstances which at first filled the mind only with pity and fellow-feeling. Marjory felt that she would gladly have turned her back on the matter altogether; she would fain have forgotten all about it from the day when she first saw the patient face of the sick girl at the cottage door. What had she to do with it? Such an intruder is usually rejected, or at least held at arm’s length by “the family.” A _mésalliance_ is seldom acknowledged or insisted upon by the sister of the man who has made it. Sometimes it occurred to her that it was even unmaidenly on her part to have interfered in the matter; after all, such a marriage was, she said to herself, no marriage at all--unblessed by religion, unhonoured by publicity, a secret expedient to make guilt less guilty--was not that all that could be said for it? and yet what a difference this poor formula made! Without it the girl was a lost creature, covered with shame; with it she was surrounded by the sanctity of a woman wronged, almost a martyr; and yet it was nothing, nothing! a mere expedient to make guilt less guilty. This was only one of a hundred ways in which Marjory contemplated the subject; and hers was a woman’s view of the matter altogether, though not less forcible on that account. The sting of these thoughts was that they had never occurred to her before. She had committed herself in many ways--to Isabell; and still more, to Fanshawe; she had filled the girl with false hopes, and, perhaps, still falser hopes had been raised in the man’s mind by her appeal to him. She had sent him out against his will, against his own idea of what was needful--and now she repented! This is the danger of possessing an impulsive temperament. Such disgust and discouragement seldom come until the world has been set on fire by the hasty spirit. Marjory felt (for the moment) that she would gladly have turned her back