the young man would take every means of avoiding recognition from
the master of his own college, whence he had been ignominiously
dismissed. His appearance at St. Mary's Lodge was strange enough,
and only to be accounted for by his having been invited by the vice
chancellor's young wife, who knew him only as Sir Edwin Uniacke, the
rich young baronet.

But, under shadow of these advantages, no doubt he could easily get
into society again, even at Avonsbridge, and would soon be met every
where. She might have to meet him--she, who knew what she did
know about him, and who, though there had been no absolute
engagement between them, had suffered him to address her as a lover
for four bright April weeks, ending in that thunderbolt of horror and
pain, after which he never came again to the farm-house, and she never
heard from or of him one word more.

Ought she to have told all this to her husband--was it her duty to tell
him now? Again and again the question recurred to her, full of endless
perplexities. She and Dr. Grey were not like two young people of equal
years. Why trouble him, a man of middle age, with what he might
think a silly, girlish love-story? and, above all, why wound him by
what is the sharpest pain to a loving heart, the sudden discovery of
things hitherto concealed, but which ought to have been told long ago?
He might feel it thus--or thus--she could not tell; she did not, even yet,
know him well enough to be quite sure. The misfortune of all hasty
unions had been hers--she had to find out everything after marriage.
The sweet familiarity of long courtship, which makes peculiarities and
faults excusable, nay, dear, just because they are so familiar that the
individual would not be himself or herself without them--this sacred
guarantee for all wedded happiness had not been the lot of Christian