St Oggs Passes Judgment
IT was soon known throughout St Oggs that Miss Tulliver was e back: she had not, then, eloped in order to be married to Mr Stephe - at all events, Mr Stephe had not married her - which came to the same thing, so far as her culpability was ed. We judge others acc to results; how else? - not knowing the process by which results are arrived at. If Miss Tulliver, after a few months of well-chosen travel, had returned as Mrs Stephe - with a post-marital trousseau and all the advantages possessed even by the most unwele wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St Oggs, as elsewhere, always knew what to think, would have judged in strict sistency with those results. Public opinion, in these cases, is always of the feminine gender - not the world, but the worlds wife: and she would have seen, that two handsome young people - the gentleman of quite the first family in St Oggs - having found themselves in a false position, had been led into a course, which, to say the least of it, was highly injudicious, and productive of sad pain and disappoi, especially to that sweet young thing, Miss Deane. Mr Stephe had certainly not behaved well; but then, young men were liable to those sudden infatuated attats - and bad as it might seem in Mrs Stepheo admit the fai advances from her cousins lover (i had been said that she was actually eo young Wakem - old Wakem himself had mentio) still she was very young - `and a deformed young man, you know! - and young Guest so very fasating, and, they say, he positively worshipped her (to be sure, that t last!) and he ran away with her in the boat quite against her will - and what could she do? She couldnt e back then: no one would have spoken to her. And how very well that maize-coloured satie bees her plexion - it seems as if the folds in front were quite e in - several of her dresses are made so - they say, he thinks nothing too handsome to buy for her. Poor Miss Deane! She is very pitiable - but then, there was no positive e - and the air at the coast will dood. After all, if young Guest felt no more for her than that, it was better for her not to marry him. What a wonderful marriage firl like Miss Tulliver - quite romantic! Why - young Guest will put up for the bh at the ele. Nothing like erowadays! That young Wakem nearly went out of his mind - he always was rather queer; but hes gone abroad again to be out of the way - quite the best thing for a deformed young man. Miss Unit declares she will never visit Mr and Mrs Stephe - suonsense! pretending to be better than other people. Society couldnt be carried on if we inquired into private du that way - and Christianity tells us to think no evil - and my belief is, that Miss Unit had no cards sent her. But the results, we know, were not of a kind to warrant this extenuation of the past. Maggie had returned without a trousseau, without a husband - in that degraded and outcast dition to which error is well known to lead; and the worlds wife, with that fine instinct which is given her for the preservation of society, saw at ohat Miss Tullivers duct had been of the most aggravated kind. Could anything be more detestable? - A girl so mudebted to her friends - whose mother as well as herself had received so much kindness from the Deanes - to lay the design of winning a young mans affes away from her own cousin who had behaved like a sister to her? Winning his affes? That was not the phrase for such a girl as Miss Tulliver: it would hav