the pest of Mr. Salsted's parish. Ill-learnt, slurred-over lessons,
with lame excuses, were nothing as compared with this, and the amount
of petty deceit, subterfuge, and falsehood, was frightful, especially
when Albinia recollected the tone of thought which the boy had seemed
to be catching from her. Unused to duplicity, except from mere
ignorant, unmanageable school-children, she was excessively shocked,
and felt as if he must be utterly lost to all good, and had been
acting a lie from first to last. After the conviction had broken on
her, she hardly spoke, while Mr. Kendal was promising to talk to his
son, threaten him with severe punishment, and keep a strict account
of his comings and goings, to be compared weekly with Mr. Salsted's
notes of his arrival. This settled, the tutor departed, and no
sooner was he gone, than Albinia, hiding her face in her hands, shed
tears of bitter grief and disappointment. 'My dearest,' said her
husband, fondly, 'you must not let my boy's doings grieve you in this
manner. You have been doing your utmost for him, if any one could do
him good, it would be you.'

'O no, surely I must have made some dreadful mistake, to have
promoted such faults.'

'No, I have long known him not to be trustworthy. It is an evil of
long standing.'

'Was it always so?'

'I cannot tell,' said he, sitting down beside her, and shading his
brow with one hand; 'I have only been aware of it since he has been
left alone. When the twins were together, they were led by one soul
of truth and generosity. What this poor fellow was separately no one