. Huntingdon.'

'You do understand me, sir; and I charge you, upon your honour as a
gentleman (if you have any), to answer truly. Did I, or did I not?'

'No,' muttered he, turning away.

'Speak up, sir; they can't hear you. Did I grant your request?

'You did not.'

'No, I'll be sworn she didn't,' said Hattersley, 'or he'd never look so
black.'

'I'm willing to grant you the satisfaction of a gentleman, Huntingdon,'
said Mr. Hargrave, calmly addressing his host, but with a bitter sneer
upon his countenance.

'Go to the deuce!' replied the latter, with an impatient jerk of the
head. Hargrave withdrew with a look of cold disdain, saying,--'You know
where to find me, should you feel disposed to send a friend.'

Muttered oaths and curses were all the answer this intimation obtained.

'Now, Huntingdon, you see!' said Hattersley. 'Clear as the day.'

'I don't care what he sees,' said I, 'or what he imagines; but you, Mr.
Hattersley, when you hear my name belied and slandered, will you defend
it?'

'I will.'

I instantly departed and shut myself into the library. What could
possess me to make such a request of such a man I cannot tell; but
drowning men catch at straws: they had driven me desperate between them;
I hardly knew what I said. There was no other to preserve my name from
being blackened and aspersed among this nest of boon companions, and
through them, perhaps, into the world; and beside my abandoned wretch of
a husband, the base, malignant Grimsby, and the false villain Hargrave,
this boorish ruffian, coarse and brutal as he was, shone like a glow-worm
in the dark, among its fellow worms.

What a scene was this! Could I ever have imagined that I should be
doomed to bear such insults under my own roof--to hear such things spoken
in my presence; nay, spoken to me and of me; and by those who arrogated
to themselves the name of gentlemen? And could I have imagined that I
should have been able to endure it as calmly, and to repel their insults
as firmly and as boldly as I had done? A hardness such as this is taught
by rough experience and despair alone.

Such thoughts as these chased one another through my mind, as I paced to
and fro the room, and longed--oh, how I longed--to take my child and
leave them now, without an hour's delay! But it could not be; there was
work before me: hard work, that must be done.

'Then let me do it,' said I, 'and lose not a moment in vain repinings and
idle chaf