"If you only knew what they've been told!" sobbed the girl, still
clinging to Julian. "They wouldn't listen to a word you said. As if
I could have thought of such a thing happening, and that woman to
say all the bad things of us she can turn her tongue to! I sha'n't
never get another place; I'm thrown out on the wide world!"

It was a phrase she had got out of her penny fiction; and very
remarkable indeed was the mixture of acting and real sentiment which
marked her utterances throughout.

Julian's shame and anger began to turn to compassion. A woman in
tears was a sight which always caused him the keenest distress.

"But," he cried, with tears in his own eyes, "it is impossible that
you should suffer all this through me, and I not even make an
attempt to clear you of such vile charges!"

"It was my own fault. I was thoughtless. I ought to have known that
people's always ready to think harm. But I think of nothing when I'm
with you, Julian!"

He had disengaged himself from her hands, and was holding one of
them in his own. But, as she made this last confession, she threw
her arms about his neck and drooped her head against his bosom.

"Oh, if you only felt to me like I do to you!" she sobbed.

No man can hear without some return of emotion a confession from a
woman's lips that she loves him. Harriet was the only girl whom
Julian had ever approached in familiar intercourse; she had no rival