ce, then quickly receding, leaving him deadly pale.

"Yes, sir; but, pray believe me, I had no intention of boasting of either
my wealth or title," observed the young man modestly.

"Oh!" sighed the sick man. "I am afraid then that you can never marry
Virgie."

"Sir! Why not? What is there in what I have told you to debar me from
making your daughter my wife? I should suppose you would feel that I have
it in my power to make her all the happier on account of it."

"But you do not know, you cannot understand, you English are so proud, so
tenacious of honor and caste. Ah, my poor child!" Mr. Abbot cried,
incoherently, and appearing greatly agitated and distressed.

"I am sure, my friend, I cannot comprehend this excessive emotion," Sir
William--as we shall call him henceforth--remarked.

"Would you be willing to marry a woman whose name is irretrievably linked
with disgrace?" Mr. Abbot asked, while cold perspiration started out upon
his forehead, and his face was almost convulsed with his anguish of mind.

He knew that Virgie had grown to love this man. He was conscious of the
pride and prejudices of the English aristocracy, and he believed that when
he should tell the story of his life, as he knew it was only right he
should do, Sir William Heath would no longer care to make his daughter his
wife, and her heart would be broken.

Sir William looked up, startled at this question, his own face paling
suddenly.

"Surely, Mr. Abbot, you cannot mean anything so bad as that," he replied,
in a low, pained tone.

"I will tell you all about it," said the sick man, "and then you must
decide for yourself whether you are still willing to wed the daughter of a
dishonored man. Of course you have seen from the beginning of your
acquaintance with us that no pleasure or profit that might accrue to us
from this kind of a life could ever reconcile us to it; that only some
terrible misfortune could have driven me and my beautiful darling into
such a wild and desolate region as this."

"Yes; I have felt that there was something mysterious in your being
here--some secret reason why you should have shut yourselves away from all
comfort and civilization," Sir William admitted, as his companion paused
for strength to go on. "But I have never attributed it to any willful
wrong on your part."

"Thank you for your faith in me," returned Mr. Abbot, gratefully. "I only
wish the world at large was as charitable; if it had been, I need not