better nature and feelings, for the sake of
gratifying your own wishes. Whenever it suits your purpose, you
flatter and caress Ella Campbell, to whom your slightest wish is a
law, and then when your mood changes, you treat her with neglect; and
think you, that knowing all this, Mary Howard would look favorably
upon you, even if there were no stronger reason why she should refuse
you?"

"If you mean the brandy bottle," said Henry, growing more and more
excited, "have I not sworn to quit it, and is it for you to goad me on
to madness, until I break that vow?"

"Forgive me if I have been too harsh," said Jenny, taking Henry's
hand. "You are my brother, and Mary my dearest friend, and when I say
I would not see her wedded to you, 'tis not because I love you less,
but her the more. You are wholly unlike, and would not be happy
together. But oh, if her love would win you back to virtue, I would
almost beg her, on my bended knees, not to turn away from you."

"And I tell you her love _can_ win me back, when nothing else in the
kingdom will," said Henry, snatching up the note and hurrying away.

For a time after he left the room, Jenny sat in a kind of stupefied
maze. That Mary would refuse her brother, she was certain, and she
trembled for the effect that refusal would produce upon him. Other
thoughts, too, crowded upon the young girl's mind, and made her tears
flow fast. Henry had hinted of something which he could tell her if he
would, and her heart too well foreboded what that something was. The
heavy sound of her father's footsteps, which sometimes kept her awake
the livelong night, his pale haggard face in the morning, and her
mother's nervous, anxious manner, told her that ruin was hanging over
them.

In the midst of her reverie, Henry returned. He had delivered the
letter, and now, restless and unquiet, he sat down to await its
answer. It came at last,--his rejection, yet couched in language so
kind and conciliatory, that he could not feel angry. Twice,--three
times he read it over, hoping to find some intimation that possibly
she might relent; but no, it was firm and decided, and while she
thanked him for the honor he conferred upon her, she respectfully
declined accepting it, assuring him that his secret should be kept
inviolate.

"There's some comfort in that," thought he, "for I wouldn't like to
have it known that I had been refused by a poor unknown girl," and
then, as the conviction came over him that she