“The t’other old lady and you play into each other’s hands,” cried Harry; “you know more about it than you choose to tell. But of course you are right enough if it is somebody else’s secret; only recollect, Milly, I am very glad you should be an heiress; I am extremely glad you will have a house to receive you while I am away, and that come what may, _that_ little beggar is provided for; but look here, if there’s another relation nearer than you, legitimate or illegitimate, I won’t stand by and see him wronged.” “Harry, tell me what you mean,” cried I. Harry looked at me a little indignantly; he thought I knew more than he did, and was trifling with him. “Milly, who is that fellow Luigi?” he said at last. “I make dreadful guesses,” said I, “but I cannot tell. Aunt Milly knows nothing about him. The only idea she can form is that he may be her father’s son.” Harry gave a long, half amazed, incredulous whistle, and turned away. He could scarcely believe me. Then I told him all I had heard, and something of what I had guessed. We did not converse plainly about this guess, which he had evidently jumped at as well as myself. A secret held with such dreadful tenacity was not a thing to be lightly discussed; but we both felt the same on the subject, only Harry’s mind took a more charitable view of it than I did. They say _we_ are always harder on guilty women than men are; perhaps it is natural. I felt an abhorrence rise within me which I could neither overcome nor disguise at the idea of a woman, and especially a woman in such a position as Miss Mortimer, having lived a pretended life of honour and innocence all these years, with that guilt in her mind which nobody knew but she; and now of her sacrificing and disowning nature to keep up that dreadful sham. I can understand people meeting death rather than disgrace; that is, I mean I could understand how one would rather hear that those whom one loves should die than disgrace themselves; but I don’t understand an insane struggle against the disgrace which one has deserved. That is not a noble struggle, so far as I can see; the only way of existing through such dreadful circumstances would be by enduring it; and all the same whether it was a woman or a man. I do think it is a shame to speak as some people speak on this subject, as if the _disgrace_ were all; as if all the harm was not done when the wrong was done, whether disgrace came or no!