and Miss Westerfield had been confessed to her, she appears to
have most unreasonably overrated whatever merit there might have
been in their resistance to the final temptation. She was indeed
so impulsively ready to forgive (without waiting to see if the
event justified the exercise of mercy) that she owns to having
given her hand to Miss Westerfield, at parting, not half an hour
after that young person's shameless forgetfulness of the claims
of modesty, duty and gratitude had been first communicated to
her. To say that this was the act of an inconsiderate woman,
culpably indiscreet and, I had almost added, culpably indelicate,
is only to say what she has deserved. On the next occasion to
which I feel bound to advert, her conduct was even more deserving
of censure. She herself appears to have placed the temptation
under which he fell in her husband's way, and so (in some degree
at least) to have provoked the catastrophe which has brought her
before this court. I allude, it is needless to say, to her having
invited the governess--then out of harm's way; then employed
elsewhere--to return to her house, and to risk (what actually
occurred) a meeting with Mr. Herbert Linley when no third person
happened to be present. I know that the maternal motive which
animated Mrs. Linley is considered, by many persons, to excuse
and even to justify that most regrettable act; and I have myself
allowed (I fear weakly allowed) more than due weight to this
consideration in pronouncing for the Divorce. Let me express the
earnest hope that Mrs. Linley will take warning by what has
happened; and, if she finds herself hereafter placed in other
circumstances of difficulty, let me advise her to exercise more
control over impulses which one might expect perhaps to find in a
young girl, but which are neither natural nor excusable in a
woman of her age."