Out of her sphere - University Library

156 OUT OF HER SPHERE.
—why, who that knows anything of him
would think it possible ?"
Beatey agreed with her. The coroner
and jury alike must be out of their senses.
Milly had judged her lover hardly in the
matter of Mrs. Thornton. She never dis-
guised from herself that his morale was not
the strongest in the world. He might have
gone wrong, as, in sj)ite of all her mother s
ideas as to the judiciousness of bringing
young girls up blindfold, Milly knew very
well that young men did go wrong some-
times. And Mrs. Thornton, though her
friend, and one of whom she had tried to
think kindly, was a vain woman, and un-
happily married. Audley might have erred
in a moment of weakness—she had never
credited him with deliberate perfidy—and
Mrs. Thornton might have forgotten every-
thing in the wish to escape from her dull
and uncongenial home. And, at any rate,
she owed it to herself not to become the