"Because," said Nancy, laughing, "his lordship, who is, I believe, one of your cast-off lovers, might perhaps have written to you for old acquaintance' sake." Miss Peggy had no reason for loving me, who had dethroned her, but she had reason for hating Nancy, who always delighted in bringing her to open shame. "What have I done to you, Miss Levett?" she asked her once, when they were alone. "You are not the reigning Toast: I am not jealous of you: you have done no harm to me, nor I to you. Yet you delight in saying the most ill-natured things." "You have done nothing to me, Miss Peggy," Nancy told her. "But you have done a great deal to my poor Kitty, who is innocence itself. You have slandered her: you have traduced her family, which everybody knows is as good as your own, though her father was a country clergyman and a younger son: you have denied her beauty: you have written anonymous letters to her, calumniating a young nobleman who, I verily believe, is a paragon of peers. No doubt, too, you have written letters to him calumniating her character. Truly, with the best intentions, you could not do much to hurt her, for my Kitty is above suspicion." "Very well, miss," said Miss Peggy; "very well: we understand each other. As for your charges about anonymous letters----" "We keep them all," said Nancy; "and with them a letter written and signed by yourself. And I think I shall show the letters about on the Terrace." "If you dare----" but here she checked herself, though in a great rage. "You will do as you please, Miss Levett. I shall know, some day, how to revenge myself for your insults. As for your curate's girl, I warrant her innocence and her being 'above suspicion'--indeed!--to be pretty hypocrisy and pretence. As if any woman was above suspicion!" "Oh!" said Nancy, as a parting shot, "nobody, I assure you, ever thought Miss Peggy Baker or any of her friends above suspicion. Let us do you, dear miss, so much justice. You shall not find us ungrateful or unmindful of the benefits you have conferred, or are about to confer, upon us. Malice and spite, when they are impotent, are amusing, like the tricks of a monkey in a cage, or a bear dancing at a stake." Such angry passions as these disturbed the peaceful atmosphere of the Wells. What use was it for Mr. Nash of Bath, to deprive the gentlemen of their swords when he left the ladies their tongues? "The tongue can no man tame: it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison." The accident which followed, a day or two after this, may or may not have been instigated by an enemy. Nancy always declared it was, but then she may have been prejudiced, and we never got at the truth.