ng. After all, Edith, you need not be so averse to receiving
assistance from him; the property he holds is rightfully ours."

"Mother," replied Edith, a faint flush mounting to her cheek, "for
your sake I have submitted to humiliate myself before our ruthless
kinsman, but I fear it will be in vain. Only as his wife will my
claims on his humanity and justice be acknowledged. Would you not
shrink, dearest mother, from condemning your child to such a doom?
Could you not better bear to stand above my grave, and know me at
peace within it, than to behold me wedded to this unprincipled man, to
whose pernicious example my brother owed his early doom?"

"Speak not of dying, my daughter," said the poor mother, hysterically,
"I cannot bear it; I am haunted by the fear that I shall at last be
left on earth alone. I daily behold you fading before my eyes without
the power to avert the fate I see written upon your pale cheek and
wasted form. As Robert's wife you would have a luxurious home, the
means of gratifying refined tastes, and of contributing to the
happiness of others. He may atone to me, by the preservation of one
child, for the destruction of the other."

"Mother, your fears for me blind you to the truth. Are not mental
griefs far more difficult to bear than the privations of poverty,
galling as they are? As Mr. Barclay's wife, I should loathe myself for
the hypocrisy I should be compelled to practice toward him; and the
wealth for which I had sold myself, would allow me leisure to brood
over my own unworthiness, until madness might be the result. No, no,
mother--come what may, I never can be so untrue to myself as to become
the wife of Robert Barclay."

"God help us, then!" said Mrs. Euston, despondingly.

A carriage drove to the door, and a gentleman alighted from it. Edith
heard the bustle, but she did not look out to see what occasioned it,
and she was startled from her painful reverie by a knock on the door.
She opened it, and started back with a faint cry as she recognized
Barclay.

"The landlady told me to come up," he said, as he glanced around the
wretched apartment, and a slight twinge of remorse touched his heart
as he remarked the changed appearance of Edith. She motioned him to
enter, while Mrs. Euston arose from the bed, and offered him a seat.

"I concluded it would be best to reply to your communication in
person," said he to Mrs. Euston, as he took the offered chair. "I come
with the most liberal i