acknowledged it, and at first induced her aunt to join her in the daily walk of half a mile to sit with him.  Mrs. Lackstraw was a very busy lady at her farm; she was often summoned to London by her intuition of John’s wish to have her presiding at table for the entertainment of his numerous guests; she confessed that she supervised the art of nursing better than she practised it, and supervision can be done at a distance if the subordinate is properly attentive to the rules we lay down, as Jane appeared to be.  So Jane was left to him.  She loved the country; Springtide in the country set her singing; her walk to her patient at Lappett’s farm and homeward was an aethereal rapture for a heart rocking easy in fulness.  There was nothing to trouble it, no hint of wild winds and heavy seas, not even the familiar insinuation from the vigilant monitress, her aunt, to bid her be on her guard, beware of what it is that great heiresses are courted for, steel her heart against serpent speeches, see well to have the woman’s precious word No at the sentinel’s post, and alert there.  Mrs. Lackstraw, the most vigilant and plain-spoken of her sex, had forborne to utter the usual warnings which were to preserve Miss Mattock for her future Earl or Duke and the reason why she forbore was a double one; a soldier and Papist could never be thought perilous to a young woman scorning the sons of Mars and slaves of sacerdotalism.  The picture of Jane bestowing her hand on a Roman Catholic in military uniform, refused to be raised before the mind.  Charitableness, humaneness, the fact that she was an admirable nurse and liked to exercise her natural gift, perfectly accounted for Jane’s trips to Lappett’s farm, and the jellies and fresh dairy dainties and neat little dishes she was constantly despatching to the place.  A suggestion of possible danger might prove more dangerous than silence, by rendering it attractive.  Besides, Jane talked of poor Captain Philip as Patrick O’Donnell’s brother, whom she was bound to serve in return for Patrick’s many services to her; and of how unlike Patrick he was.  Mrs. Lackstraw had been apprehensive about her fancy for Patrick.  Therefore if Captain Philip was unlike him, and strictly a Catholic, according to report, the suspicion of danger dispersed, and she was allowed to enjoy the pleasures of the metropolis as frequently as she chose.  The nursing of a man of Letters, or of the neighbour to him, a beggar in rags, would not have been so tolerated.  Thus we perceive that wits actively awake inside the ring-fence of prepossessions they have erected may lull themselves with their wakefulness.  Who would have thought!—­is the cry when the strongest bulwark of the fence is broken through.