"She has interfered with my management, and stolen the hearts of my children;" "she has annoyed me and resisted my authority ?" would never have been given by either nurse or aunt as a reason for either their feelings or their actions; yet so it was.
Nevertheless, when in the hall of the Lodge they came suddenly face to face with Mrs.Grey, entering, hat in hand, from the door of the private garden, the only place where she ever walked alone now, they both started as if they had been detected in something wrong.

She looked so quiet and gentle, grave and sweet, modest as a girl and dignified as a young matron--so perfectly unconscious of all that was being said or planned against her, that if these two malicious women had a conscience--and they had, both of them--they must have felt it smite them now.
"Miss Gascoigne, how kind of you to walk home with the children! Papa and I would have come, but he was obliged to dine in Hall.

He will soon be free now, and will walk back with you.

Pray come in and rest; you look tired." Mrs.Grey's words and manner, so perfectly guileless and natural, for the moment quite confounded her enemy--her enemy, and yet an honest enemy.

Of the number of cruel things that are done in this world, how many are done absolutely for conscience sake by people who deceive themselves that they are acting from the noblest, purest motives-- carrying out all the Christian virtues, in short, only they do so, not in themselves, but against other people.