grasped me by the arm as Dr. Lloyd had grasped me.

I shaded my averted face with my hands; my heart heaved with the agony of
my suppressed passion. A wrong, however deep, only to myself, I could
have pardoned without effort; such a wrong to Lilian,--no! I could not
say "I forgive."

The dying wretch was perhaps more appalled by my silence than she would
have been by my reproach. Her voice grew shrill in her despair.

"You will not pardon me! I shall die with your curse on my head! Mercy!
mercy! That good man, Mr. C----, assured me you would be merciful. Have
you never wronged another? Has the Evil One never tempted you?"

Then I spoke in broken accents: "Me! Oh, had it been I whom you
defamed--but a young creature so harmless, so unoffending, and for so
miserable a motive!"

"But I tell you, I swear to you, I never dreamed I could cause such
sorrow; and that young man, that Margrave, put it into my head!"

"Margrave! He had left L---- long before that letter was written!"

"But he came back for a day just before I wrote: it was the very day. I
met him in the lane yonder. He asked after you,--after Miss Ashleigh;
and when he spoke he laughed, and I said, 'Miss Ashleigh had been ill, and
was gone away;' and he laughed again. And I thought be knew more than he
would tell me, so I asked him if he supposed Mrs. Ashleigh would come
back, and said how much I should like to take this house if she did not;
and again he laughed, and said, 'Birds never stay in the nest after the