pended on my
evidence.

I could not but repeat the affirmation; but how strange a thing is
justice, that it is sometimes difficult to reconcile it to humanity,
generosity, and all the nobler qualities of the heart! At the moment
that I was telling the truth my heart, and almost my conscience,
reproached me; it was impossible for me to deny the fact; even had it
been possible by a denial to have destroyed all the links of evidence,
could I so violate every received principle? But, nevertheless, however
irreconcilable with honor, dignity, and religion such a course would
have been, the features of that poor girl have frequently since appeared
to me wearing such a reproachful glance, that I have seemed to stand
before her abashed and self-convicted.

"And this piece of lace you stole?" continued the inquisitor, turning
sharply to Rachel,--a style of examination which would scarcely be
understood in England.

She made no reply, but looked at him with a calm, steady glance. Then a
sudden thought seemed to strike her.

"I ask you but one favor," she said, speaking to M. Narelli, who had
just returned. "Order these men away, and leave me alone for ten minutes
with this gentleman: if you mistrust me, you will, at least, have
confidence in an English gentleman. Besides, what chance is there of my
escaping from this place?" And she cast a melancholy glance around the
cell. "You can watch at the door, if you choose," she continued, with
additional animation; "do this, and I will give him some most important
information; if you remain, I will tell nothing at all."

The men whispered together, and appeared to hesitate about granting her
request. I looked on in great anxiety. I was most desirous of being of
some use to the poor girl, more especially as I felt myself to have been
the innocent, but still the original cause, of all her sufferings.

"Do this," she continued, with a heightened tone,--"do this, and I will
tell you much more: I will put you upon the track of a man who has
stolen countless wealth--who has done worse than steal, who has stained
his hands with blood. You know Flavio. Well, I know him also; and at the
present moment I can tell you where he is to be found. Do you believe me
now?"

Flavio had been well known some two years previously as one of those
bandits who was the terror of a whole province. He was accused of
several daring crimes, and a few months before these events a person had
been murdered in o