in which she would meet Mr. Ashleigh Sumner. Hence Mrs. Poyntz's anxiety
to obtain all the information I could afford her of the sayings and
doings at Lady Haughton's; hence, the publicity she had so suddenly given
to my engagement; hence, when Mr. Sumner had gone away a rejected suitor,
her own departure from L----; she had seized the very moment when a vain
and proud man, piqued by the mortification received from one lady, falls
the easier prey to the arts which allure his suit to another. All was so
far clear to me. And I--was my self-conceit less egregious and less
readily duped than that of yon glided popinjay's! How skilfully this
woman had knitted me into her work with the noiseless turn of her white
hands! and yet, forsooth, I must vaunt the superior scope of my intellect,
and plumb all the fountains of Nature,--I, who could not fathom the little
pool of this female schemer's mind!

But that was no time for resentment to her or rebuke to myself. She was
now the woman who could best protect and save from slander my innocent,
beloved Lilian. But how approach that perplexing subject?

Mrs. Poyntz approached it, and with her usual decision of purpose, which
bore so deceitful a likeness to candour of mind.

"But it was not to talk of my affairs that I asked you to call, Allen
Fenwick." As she uttered my name, her voice softened, and her manner took
that maternal, caressing tenderness which had sometimes amused and
sometimes misled me. "No, I do not forget that you asked me to be your
friend, and I take without scruple the license of friendship. What are
these stories that I have heard already about Lilian Ashleigh, to whom you
were once engaged?"

"To whom I am still engaged."