priest, and tell him the whole truth. My dear child, do you think, if
he should ever find it out after your marriage, he would think you used
him right?"

"And yet _mother_ does not think so; mother does not wish me to tell
him."

"_Pauvrette, toujours les meres!_ Yes, it is always the mothers that
stand in the way of the lovers. Why cannot she marry the priest
herself?" she said between her teeth, and then looked up, startled and
guilty, to see if Mary had heard her.

"I _cannot,_" said Mary,--"I cannot go against my conscience, and my
mother, and my best friend."

At this moment, the conference was cut short by Mrs. Scudder's
provident footsteps on the garret-stairs. A vague suspicion of
something French had haunted her during her dairy-work, and she
resolved to come and put a stop to the interview, by telling Mary that
Miss Prissy wanted her to come and be measured for the skirt of her
dress.

Mrs. Scudder, by the use of that sixth sense peculiar to mothers, had
divined that there had been some agitating conference, and, had she
been questioned about it, her guesses as to what it might have been
would probably have given no bad _resume_ of the real state of the
case. She was inwardly resolved that there should be no more such for
the present, and kept Mary employed about various matters relating to
the dresses, so scrupulously that there was no opportunity for anything
more of the sort that day.