utter boundary. She needed it for the inevitable conflict. Little
sacrifices of her honesty might be made. Considering how weak she was,
how solitary, how dismally entangled, daily disgraced beyond the power
of any veiling to conceal from her fiery sensations, a little hypocrisy
was a poor girl's natural weapon. She crushed her conscientious mind
with the assurance that it was magnifying trifles: not entirely unaware
that she was thereby preparing it for a convenient blindness in the
presence of dread alternatives; but the pride of laying such stress on
small sins gave her purity a blush of pleasure and overcame the inner
warning. In truth she dared not think evilly of herself for long,
sailing into battle as she was. Nuns and anchorites may; they have
leisure. She regretted the forfeits she had to pay for self-assistance,
and, if it might be won, the world's; regretted, felt the peril of the
loss, and took them up and flung them.

"You see, old Vernon has no argument," Willoughby said to her.

He drew her hand more securely on his arm to make her sensible that she
leaned on a pillar of strength.

"Whenever the little brain is in doubt, perplexed, undecided which
course to adopt, she will come to me, will she not? I shall always
listen," he resumed, soothingly. "My own! and I to you when the world
vexes me. So we round our completeness. You will know me; you will know
me in good time. I am not a mystery to those to whom I unfold myself. I
do not pretend to mystery: yet, I will confess, your home--your
heart's--Willoughby is not exactly identical with the Willoughby before
the world. One must be armed against that rough beast."

Certain is the vengeance of the young upon monotony; nothing more