Thus the affair, as gentlemen call an engagement in which their own lives and the happiness of helpless women are concerned, was quietly arranged on the well-known laws of "honour," just as if it were nothing more than the purchase of a horse, a carriage, or a house; we at home sleeping meanwhile without suspicion, dreaming, very likely, of love and joy, even when death was threatening those dearest to us. Sometimes when I think of this uncertain life, how it is surrounded by nature with unknown dangers--how thoughtless and wicked men may in a moment destroy all that most we love--how in a moment the strongest fortune is over-thrown--how our plans may be frustrated--how the houses of cards (which we have thought so stable) tumble down without a warning, and all our happiness with them--when, I say, I think of these things I wonder how any one can laugh and be merry, save the insensate wretches whose whole thought is of their own enjoyment for the moment. Yet the Lord, our Father, is above all; in whose hand is the ordering of the smallest thing--the meanest life. Moreover, He hath purposed that youth should be a time of joy, and so hath wisely hidden away the sources of evil. * * * * * Cicely Crump was stirring betimes in the morning, and before six was in the market buying the provisions for the day. And as she passed the door of the Assembly Rooms, she looked in to see the dipper, a friend of hers, who sat at the distribution of the water, though but few of the visitors took it regularly. This good woman, Phoebe Game by name, had kept the secret for more than an hour, having heard it, under promise of strictest secrecy, from one of the late revellers when she took her place among the glasses at five o'clock in the morning. She was a good woman and discreet according to her lights; but this dreadful secret was too much for her, and if she had not told it to Cicely, must have told it to some one else. At sight of her visitor, therefore, discretion abandoned this good woman, and she babbled all she knew. Yet not in a hurry, but little by little, as becomes a woman with such a piece of intelligence, the parting of which is as the parting with power. "Cicely," she said, shaking her forefinger in an awful and threatening way, "I have heard this very morning--ah! only an hour or so since--news which would make your poor young lady jump out of her pretty shoes for fright. I have--I have." "Goodness!" cried Cicely. "Oh, Phoebe! whatever in the world is it?" "I dare not tell," she replied. "It is as much as my place is worth to tell. We dippers are not like common folk. We must have no ears to hear and no tongue to speak. We must listen and make no sign. The quality says what they like and they does what they like. It isn't for a humble dipper to speak, nor to tell, nor to spoil sport--even if it is murder."