‘Yes, no one was so much to blame as I. I will trust no living creature again. My carelessness opened the way to temptation, and Heaven knows, Lucilla, I have been infinitely more displeased with myself than with them.’
‘Well, so am I with myself, for putting her in his way. Don’t let us torment ourselves with playing the game backwards again—I hate it. Let’s see to the next.’
‘That is what I came for. Now, Cilla, though I would gladly do what I could for poor Owen, just think what work it will make with the girls at Wrapworth, who are nonsensical enough already, to have this poor runaway brought back to be buried as the wife of a fine young gentleman.’
‘Poor Edna’s history is no encouragement to look out for fine young gentlemen.’
‘They will know the fact, and sink the circumstances.’
‘So you are so innocent as to think they don’t know! Depend
upon it, every house in Wrapworth rings with it; and won’t it be more improving to have the poor thing’s grave to point the moral?’
‘Cilla, you are a little witch. You always have your way, but I don’t like it. It is not the right one.’
‘Not right for Owen to make full compensation? Mind, it is not Edna Murrell, the eloped schoolmistress, but Mrs. Sandbrook, whom her husband wishes to bury among his family.’
‘Poor lad, is he much cut up?’