One
day, all being quiet, I did venture, and actually, with a beating heart,
got so far as to find out the letter 'Il,' when I heard a step outside the
door, which opened a little bit, and I heard Lady Knollys, luckily arrested
at the entrance, talk some sentences outside, her hand still upon the
door-handle. I shut the book, as Mrs. Bluebeard might the door of the
chamber of horrors at the sound of her husband's step, and skipped to a
remote part of the room, where Cousin Knollys found me in a mysterious
state of agitation.
On any other subject I would have questioned Cousin Monica unhesitatingly;
upon this, somehow, I was dumb. I distrusted myself, and dreaded my odious
habit of blushing, and knew that I should look so horribly guilty, and
become so agitated and odd, that she would have reasonably concluded that I
had quite lost my heart to him.
After the lesson I had received, and my narrow escape of detection in the
very act, you may be sure I never trusted myself in the vicinity of that
fat and cruel 'Peerage,' which possessed the secret, but would not disclose
without compromising me.
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