I should know Allan through and through at a glance to-day, if I met him for the first time; but he kneaded my poor girl's brain this way and that, till I'd have been done for, Aunt Bell, if some one else hadn't kneaded and patted it into other ways, so that little memories come back and stay with me--little bits of sweetness and genuineness--of _realness_, Aunt Bell." "Nance, you are morbid--and I think you're wrong to go up there to be alone with your sick fancies--why are you going, Nance ?" "Aunt Bell, can I really trust you not to betray me?
Will you promise to keep the secret if I actually tell you ?" Aunt Bell looked at once important and trustworthy, yet of an incorruptible propriety.
"I'm sure, my dear, you would not ask me to keep secret anything that your husband would be--" "Dear, no! You can keep mum with a spotless conscience." "Of course; I was sure of that!" "What a fraud you are, Aunt Bell--you weren't sure at all--but I shall disappoint you.

Now my reason--" She came close and spoke low--"My reason for going to Edom, whatever it is, is so utterly silly that I haven't even dared to tell myself--so, you see--my _real_ reason for going is simply to find out what my reason really is.

I'm dying to know.
There! Now never say I didn't trust you." In the first shock of this fall from her anticipations Aunt Bell neglected to remember that All is Good.

Yet she was presently far enough mollified to accompany her niece to the station.
Returning from thence after she had watched Nancy through the gate to the 3:05 Edom local, Aunt Bell lingered at the open study door of the rector of St.Antipas.He looked up cordially.
"You know, Allan, it may do the child good, after all, to be alone a little while." "Nancy--has--not--pleased--me!" The words were clean-cut, with an illuminating pause after each, so that Aunt Bell might by no chance mistake their import, yet the tone was low and not without a quality of winning sweetness--the tone of the injured good.
"I've seen that, Allan.

Nance undoubtedly has a vein of selfishness.
Instead of striving to please her husband, she--well, she has practically intimated to me that a wife has the right to please herself.
Of course, she didn't say it brutally in just those words, but--" "It's the modern spirit, Aunt Bell--the spirit of unbelief.