ly explain what,
had grieved her, and she gave free expression to her feelings. "I have
no one that loves me but you," she said; "and if you leave me I must
droop and die. Are you true to me, dearest Clement,--true as when we
promised each other that we would love while life lasted? Or have you
forgotten one who will never cease to remember that she was once your
own Susan?"

Clement dropped the letter from his hand, and sat a long hour looking at
the exquisitely wrought features of her who had come between him and
honor and his plighted word.

At length he arose, and, lifting the bust tenderly from its pedestal,
laid it upon the cloth with which it had been covered. He wrapped it
closely, fold upon fold, as the mother whom man condemns and God pities
wraps the child she loves before she lifts her hand against its life.
Then he took a heavy hammer and shattered his lovely idol into shapeless
fragments. The strife was over.

CHAPTER XXII.

A CHANGE OF PROGRAMME.

Mr. William Murray Bradshaw was in pretty intimate relations with Miss
Cynthia Badlam. It was well understood between them that it might be of
very great advantage to both of them if he should in due time become the
accepted lover of Myrtle Hazard. So long as he could be reasonably
secure against interference, he did not wish to hurry her in making her
decision. Two things he did wish to be sure of, if possible, before
asking her the great question;--first, that she would answer it in the
affirmative; and secondly, that certain contingencies, the turning of
which was not as yet absolutely capable of being predicted, should
happen as he expected. Cynthia had the power of furthering his wishes in
many direct and indirect ways, and he felt sure of her co-operation. She
had some reason to fear his enmity if she displeased him, and he had
taken good care to make her understand that her interests would be
greatly promoted by the success of the plan which he had formed, and
which was confided to her alone.

He kept the most careful eye on every possible source of disturbance to
this quietly maturing plan. He had no objection to have Gifted Hopkins
about Myrtle as much as she would endure to have him. The youthful bard
entertained her very innocently with his bursts of poetry, but she was
in no danger from a young person so intimately associated with the
yard-stick, the blunt scissors, and the brown-paper parcel. There was
Cyprian too, about whom he did not fe