Dorothea and Virginia were drawn to compassionate sentiments, in spite of the provokeing recurrence of Mr. Posterley’s malady.  He had not an income to support a wife.  Always was this unfortunate gentleman entangling himself in a passion for maid or widow of the Wells and it was desperate, a fever.  Mr. Stuart Rem charitably remarked on his taking it so severely because of his very scrupulous good conduct.  They pardoned a little wound to their delicacy, and asked:  ‘On this occasion?’ Mr. Stuart Rem named a linendraper’s establishment near the pantiles, where a fair young woman served.  ‘And her reputation?’ That was an article less presentable through plate-glass, it seemed:  Mr. Stuart Rem drew a prolonged breath into his nose.

‘It is most melancholy!’ they said in unison.  ‘Nothing positive,’ said he.  ’But the suspicion of a shadow, Mr. Stuart Rem!  You will not permit it?’ He stated, that his friend Buttermore might have influence.  Dorothea said:  ’When I think of Mr. Posterley’s addiction to ceremonial observances, and to matrimony, I cannot but think of a sentence that fell from Mr. Durance one day, with reference to that division of our Church:  he called it:—­you frown! and I would only quote Mr. Durance to you in support of your purer form, as we hold it to be—­with the candles, the vestments, Confession, alas! he called it, “Rome and a wife."’

Mr. Stuart Rem nodded an enforced assent:  he testily dismissed mention of Mr. Durance, and resumed on Mr. Posterley.

The good ladies now, with some of their curiosity appeased, considerately signified to him, that a young maiden was present.

The young maiden had in heart stuff to render such small gossip a hum of summer midges.  She did not imagine the dialogue concerned her in any way.  She noticed Mr. Stuart Rem’s attentive scrutiny of her from time to time.  She had no sensitiveness, hardly a mind for things about her.  To-morrow she was to see Captain Dartrey.  She dwelt on that prospect, for an escape from the meshes of a painful hour—­the most woeful of the hours she had yet known-passed with Judith Marsett:  which dragged her soul through a weltering of the deeps, tossed her over and over, still did it with her ideas.  It shocked her nevertheless to perceive how much of the world’s flayed life and harsh anatomy she had apprehended, and so coldly, previous to Mrs. Marsett’s lift of the veil in her story of herself:  a skipping revelation, terrible enough to the girl; whose comparison of the previously suspected things with the things now revealed imposed the thought of her having been both a precocious and a callous young woman:  a kind of ‘Delphica without the erudition,’ her mind phrased it airily over her chagrin.—­And the silence of Dudley proved him to have discovered his error in choosing such a person—­he was wise, and she thanked him.  She had an envy of the ignorant-innocents adored by the young man she cordially thanked for quitting her.  She admired the white coat of armour they wore, whether bestowed on them by their constitution or by prudence.  For while combating mankind now on Judith Marsett’s behalf, personally she ran like a hare from the mere breath of an association with the very minor sort of similar charges; ardently she desired the esteem of mankind; she was at moments abject.  But had she actually been aware of the facts now known?