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did not more conceal from notice the lessons he received from Egeria than did George Morley those which he received from the basket-maker. Natural, indeed, must be his wish for secrecy—pretty story it would be for Humberston, its future rector learning now to preach a sermon from an old basket-maker! But he had a nobler and more imperious motive for discretion—his honor was engaged to it. Waife exacted a promise that he would regard the intercourse between them as strictly private and confidential.

"It is for my sake I ask this," said Waife, frankly, "though I might say it was for yours." The Oxonian promised, and was bound. Fortunately, Lady Montfort quitting the Great House the very day after George had first encountered the basket-maker, and writing word that she should not return to it for some weeks—George was at liberty to avail himself of her lord's general invitation to make use of Montfort Court as his lodgings when in the neighborhood, which the proprieties of the world would not have allowed him to do while Lady Montfort was there without either host or female guests. Accordingly, he took up his abode in a corner of the vast palace, and was easily enabled when he pleased, to traverse unobserved the solitudes of the park, gain the water-side, or stroll thence through the thick copse leading to Waife's cottage, which bordered the park-pales, solitary, sequestered, beyond sight of the neighboring village. The great house all to himself, George was brought in contact with no one to whom, in unguarded moments, he could even have let out a hint of his new acquaintance, except the clergyman of the parish, a worthy man, who lived in strict retirement upon a scanty stipend. For the Marquis was the lay impropriator; the living was therefore but a very poor vicarage, below the acceptance of a Vipont or a Vipont's tutor—sure to go to a quiet worthy man forced to live in strict retirement. George saw too little of this clergyman either to let out secrets or pick up information. From him, however, George did incidentally learn that Waife had some months previously visited the village, and proposed to the bailiff to take the cottage and osier land, which he now rented—that he represented himself as having known an old basket-maker who had dwelt there many years ago, and had learned the bas-