committed already, and cannot be undone. To-night, I will write my
application to the directors of the ----- Asylum; tomorrow I will be on
my way to Cross Hall. I cannot, after such a day as this, collect my
thoughts sufficiently in a strange house, among strangers, to do myself
justice in my application, nor can I bear to let my cousin know that
his brotherly kindness, and my sisterly confidence, may be
misunderstood and misinterpreted. I have no mother, and no adviser. I
had feared that perhaps the direct or indirect assistance of food and
lodging for two days might peril my cousin's inheritance,--though Miss
Thomson thought there was no danger of that either,--but I never
imagined that any one would think the less of me for accepting it. If
you do not tell him, he need never know it; for I am sure it was the
last idea he could have entertained."

What sad earnest eyes Jane turned on Mrs. Rennie!--she could
not help being touched with her expression and her appeal. A vision of
her own Eliza--without friends--without a mother--doing something as
ill-advised, and feeling very acutely when a stranger told her of it,
gave a distinctness to Jane's present suffering that, without that
little effort of imagination, she could not have realized. Besides, she
had a great wish to think highly of Mr. Hogarth, and to please him; and
the certainty that he would be extremely pained and, perhaps, offended
by her suggestion that he had compromised his cousin's position by his
good-natured invitation, had its influence.

"What you say is very reasonable, Miss Melville, but you forget that
to-morrow is Sunday. You would not travel on the Sabbath, I hope?"

"I seem to have forgotten the days of the week in this terrible whirl,"
said Jane. "I would rather not travel on Sunday, but this seems a case