Andrew's proposal as an attempt to bribe her
eldest son into withdrawing a charge against his
brother, which that brother knew to be true.
After this last repulse, nothing more could be
done. Michael withdrew to the Continent; and his
mother followed him there. She lived long enough
and saved money enough out of her income, to
add considerably, at her death, to her elder
son's five thousand pounds. He had previously
still further improved his pecuniary position by
an advantageous marriage; and he is now passing
the close of his days either in France or Switzerland
—a widower, with one son. We shall
return to him shortly. In the mean time, I
need only tell you that Andrew and Michael
never again met—never again communicated
even by writing. To all intents and purposes,
they were dead to each other, from those early
days to the present time.

"You can now estimate what Andrew's position
was when he left his profession and returned
to England. Possessed of a fortune, he was alone
in the world;—his future destroyed at the fair
outset of life; his mother and brother estranged from
him; his sister lately married, with interests and
hopes in which he had no share. Men of firmer
mental calibre might have found refuge from such
a situation as this, in an absorbing intellectual
pursuit. He was not capable of the effort; all
the strength of his character lay in the affections
he had wasted. His place in the world was that
quiet place at home, with wife and children to
make his life happy, which he had lost for ever.
To look back, was more than he dare. To look
forward, was more than he could. In sheer
despair, he let his own impetuous youth drive
him on; and cast himself into the lowest dissipations
of a London life.

"A woman's falsehood had driven him to his
ruin. A woman's love saved him, at the outset
of his downward career. Let us not speak of
her harshly—for we laid her with him yesterday
in the grave.

"You, who only knew Mrs. Vanstone in later
life, when illness and sorrow and secret care
had altered and saddened her, can form no
adequate idea of her attractions of person and
character when she was a girl of seventeen. I was
with Andrew when he first met her. I had tried
to rescue him, for one night at least, from
degrading associates and degrading pleasures, by
persuading him to go with me to a ball given by
one of the great City Companies. There, they
met. She produced a strong impression on him,
the moment he saw her. To me, as to him, she
was a total stranger. An introduction to her,
obtained in the customary manner, informed him
that she was the daughter of one Mr. Blake. The
rest he discovered from herself. They were
partners in the dance (unobserved in that crowded
ball-room) all through the evening.

"Circumstances were against her from the
first. She was unhappy at home. Her family
and friends occupied no recognised station in
life: they were mean, underhand people, in every
way unworthy of her. It was her first ball—it was
the first time she had ever met with a man who
had the breeding, the manners, and the
conversation of a gentleman. Are these excuses for
her, which I have no right to make? If we have
any human feeling for human weakness, surely
not!

"The meeting of that night decided their
future. When other meetings had followed, when
the confession of her love had escaped her, he
took the one course of all others (took it
innocently and unconsciously) which was most
dangerous to them both. His frankness and his
sense of honour forbade him to deceive her: he
opened his heart, and told her the truth. She
was a generous impulsive girl; she had no home
ties strong enough to plead with her; she was
passionately fond of him—and he had made that
appeal to her pity, which, to the eternal honour
of women, is the hardest of all appeals for them
to resist. She saw, and saw truly, that she alone
stood between him and his ruin. The last chance
of his rescue hung on her decision. She
decided; and saved him.

"Let me not be misunderstood; let me not
be accused of trifling with the serious social
question on which my narrative forces me to
touch. I will defend her memory by no false
reasoning—I will only speak the truth. It
is the truth that she snatched him from mad
excesses which must have ended in his early
death. It is the truth that she restored him to
that happy home-existence, which you remember
so tenderly—which he remembered so gratefully
that, on the day when he was free, he made her
his wife. Let strict morality claim its right, and
condemn her early fault. I have read my New
Testament to little purpose indeed, if Christian
mercy may not soften the hard sentence against
her—if Christian charity may not find a plea for
her memory in the love and fidelity, the suffering
and the sacrifice, of her whole life.

"A few words more will bring us to a later
time, and to events which have happened within
your own experience.

"I need not remind you that the position
in which Mr. Vanstone was now placed, could
lead in the end to but one result—to a disclosure,
more or less inevitable, of the truth. Attempts
were made to keep the hopeless misfortune
of his life a secret from Miss Blake's family;
and, as a matter of course, those attempts failed
before the relentless scrutiny of her father
ind her friends. What might have happened
if her relatives had been what is termed
'respectable,' I cannot pretend to say. As it was,
they were people who could (in the common
phrase) be conveniently treated with. The only
survivor of the family, at the present time, is a
scoundrel calling himself Captain Wragge. When
I tell you that, he privately extorted the price of
his silence from Mrs. Vanstone, to the last; and
when I add that his conduct presents no
extraordinary exception to the conduct, in their
lifetime, of the other relatives—you will understand