“You poor deluded girl,” she said, “don’t you see that you can’t open your mind to particular suspicions of one of the two, without opening your mind to general suspicions of the other? They had worked together. Their goings-on had been going on for some time. Even granting that it was as you have had in your thoughts, what the two had done together would come familiar to the mind of one.”

“You don’t know father, Miss, when you talk like that. Indeed, indeed, you don’t know father.”

“Lizzie, Lizzie,” said Miss Potterson. “Leave him. You needn’t break with him altogether, but leave him. Do well away from him; not because of what I have told you tonight⁠—we’ll pass no judgment upon that, and we’ll hope it may not be⁠—but because of what I have urged on you before. No matter whether it’s owing to your good looks or not, I like you and I want to serve you. Lizzie, come under my direction. Don’t fling yourself away, my girl, but be persuaded into being respectable and happy.”