for life, if I chose to open my lips and let out
his secret.' I said no more about him than
that; being brought to my senses, as soon as
those words had escaped me, by the sight of my
daughter's face, looking eagerly and curiously
at mine. I instantly ordered her out of the
room, until I had composed myself again.

"My sensations were not pleasant, I can tell
you, when I came to reflect on my own folly.
Anne had been more than usually crazy and
queer, that year; and when I thought of the
chance there might be of her repeating my words
in the town, and mentioning his name in
connexion with them, if inquisitive people got hold
of her, I was finely terrified at the possible
consequences. My worst fears for myself, my worst
dread of what he might do, led me no farther
than this. I was quite unprepared for what
really did happen, only the next day.

"On that next day, without any warning to
me to expect him, he came to the house.

"His first words, and the tone in which he
spoke them, surly as it was, showed me plainly
enough that he had repented already of his
insolent answer to my application, and that he
had come (in a mighty bad temper) to try and
set matters right again, before it was too late.
Seeing my daughter in the room with me (I had
been afraid to let her out of my sight, after what
had happened the day before), he ordered her
away. They neither of them liked each other;
and he vented the ill-temper on her, which he
was afraid to show to me.

"'Leave us,' he said, looking at her over his
shoulder. She looked back over her shoulder,
and waited, as if she didn't care to go. ' Do
you hear?' he roared out; ' leave the room.'
'Speak to me civilly,' says she, getting red in
the face. ' Turn the idiot out,' says he, looking
my way. She had always had crazy notions of
her own about her dignity; and that word,
'idiot,' upset her in a moment. Before I could
interfere, she stepped up to him, in a fine
passion. ' Beg my pardon, directly,' says she, ' or
I'll make it the worse for you. I'll let out
your Secret! I can ruin you for life, if I choose
to open my lips.' My own words! – repeated
exactly from what I had said the day before –
repeated, in his presence, as if they had come
from herself. He sat speechless, as white as the
paper I am writing on, while I pushed her out
of the room. When he recovered himself –

"No! I am too respectable a woman to
mention what he said when he recovered himself.
My pen is the pen of a member of the rector's
congregation, and a subscriber to the ' Wednesday
Lectures on Justification by Faith' – how
can you expect me to employ it in writing bad
language? Suppose, for yourself, the raging,
swearing frenzy of the lowest ruffian in
England; and let us get on together, as fast as may
be, to the way in which it all ended.

"It ended, as you probably guess, by this
time, in his insisting on securing his own safety
by shutting her up. I tried to set things right.
I told him that she had merely repeated, like a
parrot, the words she had heard me say, and
that she knew no particulars whatever, because
I had mentioned none, I explained that she
had affected, out of crazy spite against him, to
know what she really did not know; that she only
wanted to threaten him and aggravate him, for
speaking to her as he had just spoken; and that
my unlucky words gave her just the chance of
doing mischief of which she was in search. I
referred him to other queer ways of hers, and to
his own experience of the vagaries of half-witted
people – it was all to no purpose – he would not
believe me on my oath – he was absolutely certain
I had betrayed the whole Secret. In short, he
would hear of nothing but shutting her up.

"Under these circumstances, I did my duty
as a mother. 'No pauper Asylum,' I said;
' I won't have her put in a pauper Asylum. A
Private Establishment, if you please. I have
my feelings, as a mother, and my character to
preserve in the town; and I will submit to
nothing but a Private Establishment, of the sort
which my genteel neighbours would choose for
afflicted relatives of their own.' Those were my
words. It is gratifying to me to reflect that I
did my duty. Though never over-fond of my
late daughter, I had a proper pride about her.
No pauper stain – thanks to my firmness and
resolution – ever rested on MY child.

"Having carried my point (which I did the
more easily, in consequence of the facilities
offered by private Asylums), I could not refuse
to admit that there were certain advantages
gained by shutting her up. In the first place,
she was taken excellent care of – being treated
(as I took care to mention in the town) on the
footing of a Lady. In the second place, she
was kept away from Welmingham, where she
might have set people suspecting and inquiring,
by repeating my own incautious words.

"The only drawback of putting her under
restraint, was a very slight one. We merely
turned her empty boast about knowing the
Secret, into a fixed delusion. Having first
spoken in sheer crazy spitefulness against the
man who had offended her, she was cunning
enough to see that she had seriously frightened
him, and sharp enough afterwards to discover that
he was concerned in shutting her up. The
consequence was she flamed out into a perfect frenzy
of passion against him, going to the Asylum;
and the first words she said to the nurses, after
they had quieted her, were, that she was put in
confinement for knowing his secret, and that she
meant to open her lips and ruin him, when the
right time came.

"She may have said the same thing to you,
when you thoughtlessly assisted her escape. She
certainly said it (as I heard last summer) to
the unfortunate woman who married our sweet-
tempered, nameless gentleman, lately deceased.
If either you, or that unlucky lady, had
questioned my daughter closely, and had insisted on
her explaining what she really meant, you would
have found her lose all her self-importance
suddenly, and get vacant, and restless, and contused
– you would have discovered that I am writing
nothing here but the plain truth. She knew that