Pen could not help feeling that he was in a panic,
and that he was acting like a rogue and hypocrite.
How was it that a single country-girl should be the object of fear and
trembling to such an accomplished gentleman as Mr. Pen? His worldly
tactics and diplomacy, his satire and knowledge of the world, could
not bear the test of her purity, he felt somehow. And he had to own to
himself that his affairs were in such a position, that he could not
tell the truth to that honest soul. As he rode from Clavering to
Baymouth he felt as guilty as a school-boy, who doesn't know his
lesson and is about to face the awful master. For is not truth the
master always, and does she not have the power and hold the book?
Under the charge of her kind, though somewhat wayward and absolute,
patroness, Lady Rockminster, Laura had seen somewhat of the world in
the last year, had gathered some accomplishments, and profited by the
lessons of society. Many a girl who had been accustomed to that too
great tenderness in which Laura's early life had been passed, would
have been unfitted for the changed existence which she now had to
lead.
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