not start back so indignantly. Listen to me as patiently as I have
listened to you. That when you brought back the unfortunate young woman
to her poor mother, her mind was disordered, and became yet more
dangerously so, I can well believe; that she is now recovered, and thinks
with shame, or refuses to think at all, of her imprudent flight, I can
believe also; but I do not believe, the World cannot believe, that she did
not, knowingly and purposely, quit her mother's roof, and in quest of that
young stranger so incautiously, so unfeelingly admitted to her mother's
house during the very time you were detained on the most awful of human
accusations. Every one in the town knows that Mr. Margrave visited daily
at Mrs. Ashleigh's during that painful period; every one in the town knows
in what strange out-of-the-way place this young man had niched himself;
and that a yacht was bought, and lying in wait there. What for? It is
said that the chaise in which you brought Miss Ashleigh back to her home
was hired in a village within an easy reach of Mr. Margrave's lodging--of
Mr. Margrave's yacht. I rejoice that you saved the poor girl from ruin;
but her good name is tarnished; and if Anne Ashleigh, whom I sincerely
pity, asks me my advice, I can but give her this: 'Leave L----, take your
daughter abroad; and if she is not to marry Mr. Margrave, marry her as
quietly and as quickly as possible to some foreigner.'"

"Madam! madam! this, then, is your friendship to her--to me! Oh, shame
on you to insult thus an affianced husband! Shame on me ever to have
thought you had a heart!"

"A heart, man!" she exclaimed, almost fiercely, springing up, and
startling me with the change in her countenance and voice. "And little
you would have valued, and pitilessly have crushed this heart, if I had
suffered myself to show it to you! What right have you to reproach me? I
felt a warm interest in your career, an unusual attraction in your