That was false, for though to marry Emily Hastings to any one but Mr. Marlow was what the lady did very sincerely desire; yet there was a long account to be settled with Sir Philip Hastings which could not well be discharged without a certain amount of injury to him and his. The lady was well aware, too, that she had told a lie, and moreover that it was one which Mr. Shanks was not at all likely to believe. Perhaps even she did not quite wish him to believe it, and at all events she knew that her actions must soon give it contradiction. But men make strange distinctions between speech and action, not to be accounted for without long investigation and disquisition. There are cases where people shrink from defining in words their purposes, or giving voice to their feelings, even when they are prepared by acts to stamp them for eternity. There are cases where men do acts which they dare not cover by a lie. Mrs. Hazleton sought for no less than the ruin of Sir Philip Hastings; she had determined it in her own heart, and yet she would not own it to her agent--perhaps she would not own it to herself. There is a dark secret chamber in the breast of every one, at the door of which the eyes of the spirit are blindfolded, that it may not see the things to which it is consenting. Conscience records them silently, and sooner or later her book is to be opened; it may be in this world: it may be in the next: but for the time that book is in the keeping of passion, who rarely suffers the pages to be seen till purpose has been ratified by act, and remorse stands ready to pronounce the doom. There was a pause after Mrs. Hazleton had spoken, for the attorney was busy also with thoughts he wished to utter, yet dared not speak. The first prospect of a lawsuit--the only sort of the picturesque in which he could find pleasure--a long, intricate, expensive lawsuit, was fading before his eyes as if a mist were coming over the scene. Where were his consultations, his letters, his briefs, his pleas, his rejoinders, his demurrers, his appeals? Where were the fees, the bright golden fees? True, in the hopelessness of his young client's fortunes, he had urged the marriage with a proviso, that if it took place by his skilful management, a handsome bonus was to be his share of the spoil. But then Mrs. Hazleton's first communication had raised brighter hopes, had put him more in his own element, had opened to him a scene of achievements as glorious to his notions as those of the listed field to knights of old; and now all was vanishing away. Yet he did not venture to tell her how much he was disappointed, still less to show her why and how. It was the lady who spoke first; and she did so in as calm, deliberate, passionless a tone as if she had been devising the fashion of a new Mantua.