"She is a very good girl, you see, Nancy," he said to the old
housekeeper, "but she's young, and she's giddy; and of course I can't
take upon myself to answer for Miss Paget, who may or may not be a good
girl. She comes of a very bad stock, however; and I am bound to remember
that. Some people think that you can't give a girl too much liberty. My
ideas lean the other way. I think you can't take too much care of a very
pretty girl whom you are bound by duty to protect."
All this sounded very noble and very conscientious. It sounded thus even
to Mrs. Woolper, who in her intercourse with Philip Sheldon could never
quite divest herself of one appalling memory. That memory was the death
of Tom Halliday, and the horrible thoughts and fears that had for a time
possessed her mind in relation to that death. The shadow of that old
ghastly terror sometimes came between her and Mr. Sheldon, even now,
though she had long ago assured herself that the terror had been alike
groundless and unreasonable.
"Didn't I see my own nephew carried off by a fever twice as sudden as the
fever that carried off poor Mr. Halliday?" she said to herself; "and am I
to think horrid things of him as I nursed a baby, because a cup of greasy
beef-tea turned my stomach?"
Convinced by such reasoning as this that she had done her master a
grievous wrong, and grateful for the timely shelter afforded in her old
age, Mrs.
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