"I left her within an hour."

At——?"

"At her father's."

Mr. Harthouse's face lengthened in spite of
his coolness, and his perplexity increased.
"Then I certainly," he thought, " do not see
where we are going."

"She hurried there last night. She arrived
there in great agitation, and was insensible
all through the night. I live at her father's,
and was with her. You may be sure, sir,
you will never see her again, as long as you
live."

Mr. Harthouse drew a long breath; and, if
ever man found himself in the position of not
knowing what to say, made the discovery
beyond all question that he was so
circumstanced. The child-like ingenuousness
with which his visitor spoke, her modest
fearlessness, her truthfulness which put
all artifice aside, her entire forgetfulness
of herself in her earnest quiet holding
to the object with which she had come;
all this, together with her reliance on
his easily-given promise—which in itself
shamed him—presented something in which
he was so inexperienced, and against which
he knew any of his usual weapons would
fall so powerless; that not a word could
he rally to his relief.

At last he said:

"So startling an announcement, so
confidently made, and by such lips, is really
disconcerting in the last degree. May I be
permitted to inquire, if you are charged to
convey that information to me in those
hopeless words, by the lady of whom we speak?"

"I have no charge from her."

"The drowning man catches at the straw.
With no disrespect for your judgment, and
with no doubt of your sincerity, excuse my
saying that I cling to the belief that there
is yet hope that I am not condemned to
perpetual exile from that lady's presence."

"There is not the least hope. The first
object of my coming here, sir, is to assure
you that you must believe that there is no
more hope of your ever speaking with her
again, than there would be if she had died
when she came home last night."

"Must believe? But if I can't—or if I
should, by infirmity of nature, be obstinate—
and won't—"

"It is still true. There is no hope."

James Harthouse looked at her with an
incredulous smile upon his lips; but her mind
looked over and beyond him, and the smile
was quite thrown away.

He bit his lip, and took a little time for
consideration.

"Well! If it should unhappily appear," he
said, "after due pains and duty on my part, that
I am brought to a position so desolate as this
banishment, I shall not become the lady's
persecutor. But you said you had no
commission from her?"

"I have only the commission of my love
for her, and her love for me. I have no other
trust, than that I have been with her since
she came home, and that she has given me
her confidence. I have no further trust, than
that I know something of her character and
her marriage. O Mr. Harthouse, I think
you had that trust too!"

He was touched in the cavity where his
heart should have been—in that nest of addled
eggs, where the birds of heaven would have
lived if they had not been whistled away—by
the fervor of this reproach.

"I am not a moral sort of fellow," he said,
"and I never make any pretensions to the
character of a moral sort of fellow. I am as
immoral as need be. At the same time, in
bringing any distress upon the lady who is the
subject of the present conversation, or in
unfortunately compromising her in any way, or
in committing myself by any expression of
sentiments towards her, not perfectly
reconcilable with—in fact with—the domestic hearth;
or in taking any advantage of her father's
being a machine, or of her brother's being a
whelp, or of her husband's being a bear; I
beg to be allowed to assure you that I
have had no particularly evil intentions, but
have glided on from one step to another with
a smoothness so perfectly irresistible, that I
had not the slightest idea the catalogue was half
so long until I began to turn it over. Whereas
I find," said Mr. James Harthouse, in conclusion,
"that it is really in several volumes."

Though he said all this in his frivolous
way, the way seemed, for that once, a conscious
polishing of but an ugly surface. He was
silent for a moment; and then proceeded with
a more self-possessed air, though with traces of
vexation and disappointment that would not
be polished out:

"After what has been just now represented
to me, in a manner I find it impossible
to doubt—I know of hardly any other
source from which I could have accepted it
so readily—I feel bound to say to you, in
whom the confidence you have mentioned
has been reposed, that I cannot refuse to
contemplate the possibility (however unexpected)
of my seeing the lady no more. I am solely
to blame for the thing having come to this—
and—and, I cannot say." he added, rather
hard up for a general peroration, "that I
have any sanguine expectation of ever
becoming a moral sort of fellow, or that I have
any belief in any moral sort of fellow whatever."

Sissy's face sufficiently showed that her
appeal to him was not finished.

"You spoke," he resumed, as she raised her
eyes to him again, "of your first object. I
may assume that there is a second to be mentioned?"

"Yes."

"Will you oblige me by confiding it?"

"Mr. Harthouse," returned Sissy, with a
blending of gentleness and steadiness that
quite defeated him, and with a simple