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 conversation and
society. Do you blame me for that, or should I
blame myself? Condemned to live amongst
brainless puppets, my dull occupation to pull the
strings that moved them, it was a new charm to my
life to establish friendship and intercourse with
intellect, and spirit, and courage. Ah, I understand
that look, half incredulous, half inquisitive."

"Inquisitive, no! incredulous, yes! You
desired my friendship, and how does your harsh
judgment of my betrothed wife prove either to
me or to her mother, whom you have known
from your girlhood, the first duty of a friend,
which is surely not that of leaving a friend's
side the moment that he needs countenance in
calumny, succour in trouble."

"It is a better duty to prevent the calumny
and avert the trouble. Leave aside Anne
Ashleigh, a cipher that I can add or subtract from
my sum of life as I please. What is my duty to
yourself? It is plain. It is to tell you that
your honour commands you to abandon all
thoughts of Lilian Ashleigh as your wife.
Ungrateful that you are! Do you suppose it was
no mortification to my pride of woman and friend,
that you never approached me in confidence
except to ask my good offices in promoting your
courtship to another? No shock to the quiet
plans I had formed as to our familiar though
harmless intimacy, to hear that you were bent on a
marriage in which my friend would be lost to me?"

"Not lost!—not lost! On the contrary, the
regard I must suppose you had for Lilian would
have been a new link between our homes."

"Pooh! Between me and that dreamy girl
there could have been no sympathy, there could
have grown up no regard. You would have been
chained to your fireside, and—and—but no
matter. I stifled my disappointment as soon as
I felt it—stifled it, as all my life I have stifled that
which either destiny or duty—duty to myself as to
others—forbids me to indulge. Ah, do not fancy
me one of the weak criminals who can suffer a
worthy liking to grow into a debasing love. I
was not in love with you, Allen Fenwick."

"Do you think I was ever so presumptuous a
coxcomb as to fancy it?"

"No," she said, more softly; " I was not so
false to my household ties and to my own nature.
But there are some friendships which are as
jealous as love. I could have cheerfully aided
you in any choice which my sense could have
approved for you as wise; I should have been
pleased to have found in such a wife my most
intimate companion. But that silly child!—
absurd! Nevertheless, the freshness and
enthusiasm of your love touched me; you asked my
aid, and I gave it—perhaps I did believe that
when you saw more of Lilian Ashleigh you would
be cured of a fancy conceived by the eye—I
should have known better what dupes the wisest
men can be to the witcheries of a fair face and
eighteen! When I found your illusion obstinate,
I wrenched myself away from a vain regret,
turned to my own schemes and my own
ambition, and smiled bitterly to think that in pressing
you to propose so hastily to Lilian, I made your
blind passion an agent in my own plans. Enough
of this. I speak thus openly and boldly to you
now because now I have not a sentiment that
can interfere with the dispassionate soundness
of my counsels. I repeat, you cannot now marry
Lilian Ashleigh; I cannot take my daughter to
visit her; I cannot destroy the social laws that
I myself have set in my petty kingdom."

"Be it as you will. I have pleaded for her
while she is still Lilian Ashleigh. I plead for no
one to whom I have once given my name. Before
the woman whom I have taken from the altar, I
can place, as a shield sufficient, my strong breast
of man. Who has so deep an interest in Lilian's
purity as I have? Who is so fitted to know the
exact truth of every whisper against her? Yet
when I, whom you admit to have some reputation
for shrewd intelligence,—I, who tracked her way,
—I, who restored her to her home,—when I, Allen
Fenwick, am so assured of her inviolable
innocence in thought as in deed, that I trust my
honour to her keeping,—surely, surely, I confute
the scandal which you yourself do not believe
though you refuse to reject and to annul it."

"Do not deceive yourself, Allen Fenwick,"
said she, still standing beside me, her
countenance now hard and stern. "Look, where I
stand, I am The World! The World, not as
satirists depreciate or as optimists extol its
immutable properties, its all-pervasive authority.
I am The World! And my voice is the World's
voice when it thus warns you. Should you make
this marriage, your dignity of character and position
would be gone!—if you look only to lucre and
professional success, possibly they may not
ultimately suffer. You have skill, which men need;
their need may still draw patients to your door
and pour guineas into your purse. But you have
the pride, as well as the birth, of a gentleman,
and the wounds to that pride will be hourly chafed
and never healed. Your strong breast of man,
has no shelter to the frail name of woman. The
World, in its health, will look down on your wife,
though its sick may look up to you. This is not
all. The World, in its gentlest mood of indulgence,
will say, compassionately, ' Poor man!
how weak, and how deceived! What an
unfortunate marriage!' But the World is not often
indulgent, it looks most to the motives most seen
on the surface. And the World will more frequently
say, ' No, much too clever a man to be
duped. Miss Ashleigh had money. A good match
to the man who liked gold better than honour.'"

I sprang to my feet, with difficulty suppressing
my rage, and, remembering it was a woman who
spoke to me, " Farewell, madam," said I, through
my grinded teeth. "Were you, indeed, the Personation
of The World, whose mean notions you
mouth so calmly, I could not disdain you more."
I turned to the door, and left her still standing