onship, and was
much with him at the most critical time of my life, I always kept one
side, and that the better side, of my nature closed to him.

"He was a gentleman with no expectations; I the inheritor of a small
fortune that made my friendship of temporary use to him, even if it did
not offer him much to rely on in the future. We lived, he with an uncle
who was ready to throw him off the moment he was assured that he would
not marry one of his daughters, and I in my own house, which, if no
manor, was at least my own, and for the present free from debt. I myself
thought that Urquhart intended to marry one of the girls to whom I have
just alluded. But it seems that he never meant to do this, and only
encouraged his uncle to think so because he was not yet ready to give up
the shelter he enjoyed with him. But of this, as I say, I was ignorant,
and was consequently very much astonished when, one nightfall, in
passing the great Dudleigh place, he remarked:

"'How would you like to drink a glass with me in yonder? Better than in
the Fairfax kitchen, eh?'

"I thought he was joking. ''Tis a fine old house,' I observed. 'No doubt
its wines are good. But it is no tavern, and I question if Miss Dudleigh
would make either of us very welcome.'

"'You do! Then you don't know Miss Dudleigh,' he vaunted, with a proud
swelling of his person, and a lift of his head that almost took my
breath away. For, though he was a handsome fellow--too handsome for a
man no worthier than he--I should no more have presumed to have
associated him in my thoughts with Miss Dudleigh than if he had been a
worker in her fields. Not so much because she was rich--very rich for
that day and place--or that her family was an old one, and his but a
mushroom stock, as that she was a being of the gentlest instincts and
the purest thoughts, while he was what you may have gathered from my
words--vain, coarse, cowardly and mean; an abject cur beside her, who
was, and is, one of the sweetest women the sun ever shone upon."

At this expression of admiration on the part of the hermit, which proved
him to be in entire ignorance of the crime which had been perpetrated
against this woman, I found myself struck so aghast that I could not
forbear showing it. But he was too engrossed in his reminiscences to
notice my emotion, and presently continued his story by saying:

"I probably betrayed my astonishment to Urquhart, for he gave a great
laugh, and forced me about t