These had not always the sanction of polite usage:  and her English was guilty of sudden lapses to the Thameswater English of commerce and drainage instead of the upper wells.  But there are many uneducated ladies in the land.  Many, too, whose tastes in romantic literature betray now and then by peeps a similarity to Nesta’s maid Mary’s.  Mrs. Marsett liked love, blood, and adventure.  She had, moreover, a favourite noble poet, and she begged Nesta’s pardon for naming him, and she would not name him, and told her she must not read him until she was a married woman, because he did mischief to girls.  Thereupon she fell into one of her silences, emerging with a cry of hate of herself for having ever read him.  She did not blame the bard.  And, ah, poor bard! he fought his battle:  he shall not be named for the brand on the name.  He has lit a sulphur match for the lover of nature through many a generation; and to be forgiven by sad frail souls who could accuse him of pipeing devil’s agent to them at the perilous instant—­poor girls too!—­is chastisement enough.  This it is to be the author of unholy sweets:  a Posterity sitting in judgement will grant, that they were part of his honest battle with the hypocrite English Philistine, without being dupe of the plea or at all the thirsty swallower of his sugary brandy.  Mrs. Marsett expressed aloud her gladness of escape in never having met a man like him; followed by her regret that ‘Ned’ was so utterly unlike; except ’perhaps’—­and she hummed; she was off on the fraternity in wickedness.

Nesta’s ears were fatigued.  ‘My mother writes of you,’ she said, to vary the subject.

Mrs. Marsett looked.  She sighed downright:  ’I have had my dream of a friend!—­It was that gentleman with you on the pier!  Your mother objects?’

‘She has inquired, nothing more.’

’I am not twenty-three:  not as old as I should be, for a guide to you.  I know I would never do you harm.  That I know.  I would walk into that water first, and take Mrs. Worrell’s plunge:—­the last bath; a thorough cleanser for a woman!  Only, she was a good woman and didn’t want it, as we—­as lots of us do:—­to wash off all recollection of having met a man!  Your mother would not like me to call you Nesta!  I have never begged you to call me Judith.  Damnable name!’ Mrs. Marsett revelled in the heat of the curse on it, as a relief to torture of the breast, until a sense of the girl’s alarmed hearing sent the word reverberating along her nerves and shocked her with such an exposure of our Shaggy wild one on a lady’s lips.  She murmured:  ‘Forgive me,’ and had the passion to repeat the epithet in shrieks, and scratch up male speech for a hatefuller; but the twitch of Nesta’s brows made her say:  ’Do pardon me.  I did something in Scripture.  Judith could again.  Since that brute Worrell crossed me riding with you, I loathe my name; I want to do things.  I have offended you.’

’We have been taught differently.  I do not use those words.  Nothing else.’