CHAPTER XXIII.
You see now into what a fatal entanglement two high-minded young ladies were led, step by step, through yielding to the natural foible of their sex--the desire to hide everything painful from those they love, even at the expense of truth.
A nice mess they made of it with their amiable dishonesty.

And pray take notice that after the first White Lie or two, circumstances overpowered them, and drove them on against their will.

It was no small part of all their misery that they longed to get back to truth and could not.
We shall see presently how far they succeeded in that pious object, for the sake of which they first entered on concealments.

But first a word is due about one of the victims of their amiable, self-sacrificing lubricity.

Edouard Riviere fell in one night, from happiness and confidence, such as till that night he had never enjoyed, to deep and hopeless misery.
He lost that which, to every heart capable of really loving, is the greatest earthly blessing, the woman he adored.