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you the fact of there being open arms and warm hearts to receive you at Borton Hall."

"Sir," said Mrs. Howard, who appeared to be bewildered, while her woman's pride was struggling to gain the ascendancy—"I thank you. I appreciate your kindness—believe me, I appreciate it highly; but Borton Hall is no place for me."

"My dear madam. Now, you will distress me. If you assume this tone, you will very much distress me."

"Look!" she exclaimed, as she bitterly wept. "Look at the indignities that have been heaped upon me! Oh! it was cruel—cruel!"

"I said that I came as a mediator. I also came to offer my advice. You saw the carriage in which I came?"

"I have not yet seen it."

"Look: it is there. It was yours, I believe?"

"It was."

"And is still. Now my advice is, that you enter that carriage, and go at once with me to the Hall."

"Sir, I cannot do it."

"Not to be restored to him, whom I well know you love fondly, and who will receive you with open arms? You made a request, I believe, some time since—a request which you said should be your last."

"Yes, and he cruelly, contemptuously spurned me."

"He feels that it was, on his part, cruel; but he then imagined that that pledge had been violated—"

"It never was violated by me."

"He believes, he knows, that it never was. But you then, I believe, wished to see him?"

"I did."

"And do you not wish to see him now?"

She made no reply: her heart was too full. She covered her face, and wept aloud.

"My dear madam," he resumed, "be comforted. I know that you have had to endure much: I know that your sufferings have been great—"

"They have indeed."

"I know it: but now that you have a bright prospect of happiness—"

"No: I shall never be happy again."

"Now, my dear madam;—really you must not say so."

"If even I were to return, I should always be the victim of some foul suspicion."

"You wrong him: indeed you wrong him. It is true that he for a long time entertained suspicion; but look with me—look, my dear madam—at the extraordinary circumstances under which that suspicion was created."

"Nothing could justify it—nothing."

"Suppose that you had been Howard, and that he had been you, would not you have felt justified under such circumstances—"