absolutely certain, Mr. Ascott had his arm round Miss Selina's waist!

Now that was no business of hers, and yet the faithful domestic was a
good deal troubled; still more so, when, by Miss Leaf's excessive
surprise at hearing of the visitor who had come and gone, carrying
Miss Selina away to the city, she was certain the elder sister was
completely in the dark as to any thing going to happen in the family.

Could it be a wedding? Could Miss Selina really love, and be
intending to marry, that horrid little man? For strange to say, this
young servant had, what many a young beauty of rank and fashion has
not, or has lost forever--the true, pure, womanly creed, that loving
and marrying are synonymous terms; that to let a man put his arm
round your waist when you do not intend to marry him, or to intend to
marry him for money or any thing else when you do not really love
him, are things quite impossible and incredible to any womanly mind.
A creed somewhat out of date, and perhaps existing only in stray
nooks of the world; but thank God! it does exist. Hilary had it, and
she had taught it to Elizabeth.

"I wonder whether Miss Hilary knows of this? I wonder what she would
say to it?"

And now arose the perplexing ethical question aforesaid, as to
whether Elizabeth ought to tell her.

It was one of Miss Hilary's doctrines--the same for the kitchen as
for the parlor, nay, preached strongest in the kitchen, where the
mysteries of the parlor are often so cruelly exposed--that a secret
accidentally found out should be kept as sacred as if actually