int misfortunes.'

'Associate you with him, sir!' she cried.

'Indeed,' said Mr Haredale, 'I think you do. I almost believe that
because your husband was bound by so many ties to our relation, and died
in his service and defence, you have come in some sort to connect us
with his murder.'

'Alas!' she answered. 'You little know my heart, sir. You little know
the truth!'

'It is natural you should do so; it is very probable you may, without
being conscious of it,' said Mr Haredale, speaking more to himself than
her. 'We are a fallen house. Money, dispensed with the most lavish
hand, would be a poor recompense for sufferings like yours; and thinly
scattered by hands so pinched and tied as ours, it becomes a miserable
mockery. I feel it so, God knows,' he added, hastily. 'Why should I
wonder if she does!'

'You do me wrong, dear sir, indeed,' she rejoined with great
earnestness; 'and yet when you come to hear what I desire your leave to
say--'

'I shall find my doubts confirmed?' he said, observing that she faltered
and became confused. 'Well!'

He quickened his pace for a few steps, but fell back again to her side,
and said:

'And have you come all this way at last, solely to speak to me?'

She answered, 'Yes.'

'A curse,' he muttered, 'upon the wretched state of us proud beggars,
from whom the poor and rich are equally at a distance; the one being
forced to treat us with a show of cold respect; the other condescending
to us in their every deed and word, and keeping more aloof, the nearer
they approach us.--Why, if it were pain to you (as it must have been)
to break for this slight purpose the chain of habit forged through
two-and-twenty years, could you not let me know your wish, and beg me to
come to you?'

'There was not time, sir,' she rejoined. 'I took my resolution but
last night, and taking it, felt that I must not lose a day--a day! an
hour--in having speech with you.'

They had by this time reached the house. Mr Haredale paused for a
moment, and looked at her as if surprised by the energy of her manner.
Observing, however, that she took no heed of him, but glanced up,
shuddering, at the old walls with which such horrors were connected in
her mind, he led her by a private stair into his library, where Emma was
seated in a window, reading.

The young lady, seeing who approached, hastily rose and laid aside her
book, and with many kind words, and not without tears, gave her a warm
and earnest welco