“I have no wish but to answer honestly. Yesterday morning I should have said, never; and even now I can scarcely say he has, though yesterday evening, when I met him at the Duchess’s, his manner was changed. I think that if I had given him any encouragement, he would have made love to me; and it is in consequence of finding you were so far justified in your suspicions, that I now come to you, and beg you will direct my conduct. My wish is to fulfil my duties. I am convinced that by so doing alone one can know happiness,—or rather contentment (for she felt at that moment that life presented but a blank and cheerless prospect to her)—happiness I have long ceased to look for.” “Lucy! this is not kind or flattering to me.” “I am very sorry for it, but it is the fact!” She sat down, half overcome by her feelings of determined duty and of self-commiseration. “Lucy, why should you not be happy?” “Can _you_ ask, Lord Montreville?” and she gave him a glance, in which the flash of indignation was tempered by a reproachful tear, which swam in her eye. “Oh, Lucy! do you allude to that—that letter—which you so unfortunately——?” “Yes, I do allude to that letter, which I so unfortunately saw; and to that woman, that shameless woman, whom you prefer to me. But I do not wish to reproach you—the time is gone by. I have made up my mind to being the neglected wife of a faithless husband. But I wish to do my duty, for my own sake, for the sake of my conscience. Tell me what to do, and I will do it!” “Lucy, I never preferred that woman to you. I have never seen her since we left Wales, and I never will see her again as long as I live.” “I am very glad for your own sake to hear you say so. For whatever you and other fashionable men may think, you may rest assured it is a great sin—though I have latterly been so bewildered about right and wrong, and I have tried so to find excuses for those around me, that I believe, if it had not been for the Duchess, and for Milly, I should scarcely have known which was which.” Lord Montreville, though not a strict moralist, could not help being struck with these few words, which so forcibly expressed the mode by which the most amiable become contaminated by bad examples. He felt he had been the cause of her thus trying to reconcile morality to practice, instead of practice to morality.