'To tell you my fears and suspicions is to tell you a family secret that has been kept from you out of kindness all the years of your life--and I hardly think I could bring myself to that if I did not know what the world is, and how many good-natured friends Lady Hartfield will meet in society, by-and-by, ready to tell her, by hints and innuendoes, that her grandfather, the Governor of Madras, came back to England under a cloud of disgrace.' 'My poor grandfather! How dreadful!' exclaimed Mary, pale with pity and shame. 'Did he deserve his disgrace, poor unhappy creature--or was he the victim of false accusation?' 'I can hardly tell you that, Mary, any more than I can tell whether Warren Hastings deserved the abuse that was wreaked upon him at one time, or the acquittal that gave the lie to his slanderers in after years. The events occurred forty years ago--the story was only half known then, and like all such stories formed the basis for every kind of exaggeration and perversion.' 'Does Maulevrier know?' faltered Mary. 'Maulevrier knows all that is known by the general public, and no more.' 'And you have married the granddaughter of a disgraced man,' said Mary, with a piteous look. 'Did you know--when you married me?' 'As much as I know now, dear love. If you had been Jonathan Wild's granddaughter you would have been just as dear to me. I married _you_, dearest; I love _you_; I believe in _you_. All the grandfathers in Christendom would not shake my faith by one tittle.' She threw herself into his arms, and sobbed upon his breast. But sweet as this assurance of his love was to her, she was not the less stricken by shame at the thought of possible infamy in the past, a shameful memory for ever brooding over her name in the present. 'Society never forgets a scandal,' she said; 'I have heard Maulevrier say that.' 'Society has a long memory for other people's sins, but it only avenges its own wrongs. Give the wicked fairy Society a bad dinner, or leave her out of your invitation list for a ball, and she will twit you with the crimes or the misfortunes of a remote ancestor--she will go about talking of your grandfather the leper, or your great aunt who ran away with her footman. But so long as the wicked fairy gets all she wants out of you, she cares not a straw for the misdeeds of past generations.' He spoke lightly, laughingly almost, and then he ordered the dogcart to be brought round immediately, and he drove Mary across the hills towards Langdale, to bring the colour back to her blanched cheeks. He brought her home in time to give her grandmother an hour for letter-writing before luncheon, while he walked up and down the terrace below Lady Maulevrier's windows, meditating the course he was to take.