"The scamping scoundrel, to say such insults of me-but I'll be even with him; I'll show him up and take the law of him, and teach him what it is to blacken my character, as I hope for mercy." But to take the law of her traducer, or to show him up in any way, was not included at: present in George Curtis's programme. He was desirous for his own purposes, of getting him into his power, of holding the springs of future action in his own hands, and manipulating them at his pleasure. Thus, if any legal proceedings transpired, they must be commenced at his suggestion, and on a far different plea to that hypercritical one, as he thought it, which was merely identified with defamation of character, or a libel on an old woman too insignificant to be affected by it, or too poor to resent it. He had his plans well defined; any premature interference with them, any attempt to divert them into a channel alien to, and divergent from, the precise selection which he himself had made, would be an infringement on his prerogative, which he could not brook and would not accept. need of instruction. Come, now, can we not, before we quit this world, do some good in our generation? Can we not, when we are removed to the New Jerusalem, leave behind us a testimony? In a word-will you, with me, be the joint means of Captain Mowbray's conversion— of plucking that brand from the burning— and of rescuing that dear lady from torment ?” "What can I do in that way-a poor, old, simple woman?" she replied with humility, which had this merit-it was not counterfeit. "I will do all I can for that blessed lady.” “Of course you will. But you can do something for him, also.” "You can forgive him the injury he has done you; you can prove to him by your Christian spirit, that the worst murderers are those who stab another's reputation behind his back.” She winced as his words recalled the old provocation. Even religious fervour was not potent enough to gloss over the scar of that old wound, or to assuage the tingling irritation that fretted it. "No, no," she cried; "I'll have nothing to do with him any more; he may convert himself, if he pleases. I shan't stir a peg to help on his marriage garments! Murder, indeed-me with my character! Negligence-with more than forty years' experience! Ignorance, forsooth! I like that. No, Master Curtis, he's far too bad for our lights; we must leave the likes of him to the parsons, and gentry in black !" Whether the last expression was a mere synonyme for the one which had immediately preceded it, or whether it had a deeper and more mysterious significance in the Howlet's mind, Curtis did not pause to inquire. All he gleaned from her disclaimer was the fact that she wouldnot put out a finger to help Elton out of a difficulty in a spiritual sense. Could the same satisfactory assurance be predicated where temporal contingencies alone were involved? This was the question he wished to decide; and being well read in human nature, he addressed himself to its solution with a good deal of confidence in the result. Ah!" he observed, sententiously; "to a "I both will, and can. I never have committed murder, so help me God!" "That to me is satisfactory, and would be so to her, for she trusts you, nurse, as she would her own soul. But the husband, with his dark threats of hanging you, and assertions of your guilt, ever by to warp her mind, what are we to say to him ?" Say to him!" she flashed out in a paroxysm of fury, which carried along with it all the barriers of restraint which for years—dreary years, had pent back in her soul her yet drearier secret; "say to him, if you please, that his child, for all I know, is still alive, and may turn up to punish him when least expected." He stared at her with a look of admirably feigned incredulity, but said nothing. "You may believe it or disbelieve it as you choose," she continued, becoming more prolix in proportion as she saw his scepticism the more developed; "but 'tis a fact. I told him I had thrown it into the sea, and so I did; but 'twas the stillborn child of a neighbour yonder. And then I got him a certificate of a poor little dear who at that moment caused Alice to turn deadly pale, and then to clasp that cold, insensate stone in her embrace, and weep over it, as though it was itself an embodiment of her long-lost child? Was that the agony of mute despair, the abandonment of hope? or was it the origin of a new influence, the bright, bewildering excitement of a fresh-dawning experience? Was it, in a word, bitter disappointment or gratitude that led to this crisis, that wrought out this strange and eventful climax? Let the legend itself explain the mystery, for there she read these words, which her industry and perseverance had rescued from oblivion : : "Weep not, my parents dear, for little me, Despite wind and spray, and earth and stingnettles-despite, too, the handsome silk dress. which she crushed in the process, Alice Mowbray leant forward and kissed the silent witness that had testified so unmistakably in her favour. One burning kiss upon the word Son was imprinted, then a second, and yet again a third18 VOL. II. |