ted up in the bed, with a view to ring the bell, and alarm the
domestics; but she instantly anticipated me by saying:

'Do not be frightened, silly girl! If I had wished to harm you I could
have done it while you were sleeping; I need not have wakened you.
Listen to me, now, attentively and fearlessly, for what I have to say
interests you to the full as much as it does me. Tell me here, in the
presence of God, did Lord Glenfallen marry you--ACTUALLY MARRY you?
Speak the truth, woman.'

'As surely as I live and speak,' I replied, 'did Lord Glenfallen marry
me, in presence of more than a hundred witnesses.'

'Well,' continued she, 'he should have told you THEN, before you
married him, that he had a wife living, which wife I am. I feel you
tremble--tush! do not be frightened. I do not mean to harm you. Mark
me now--you are NOT his wife. When I make my story known you will be
so neither in the eye of God nor of man. You must leave this house upon
to-morrow. Let the world know that your husband has another wife living;
go you into retirement, and leave him to justice, which will surely
overtake him. If you remain in this house after to-morrow you will reap
the bitter fruits of your sin.'

So saying, she quitted the room, leaving me very little disposed to
sleep.

Here was food for my very worst and most terrible suspicions; still
there was not enough to remove all doubt. I had no proof of the truth of
this woman's statement.

Taken by itself, there was nothing to induce me to attach weight to it;
but when I viewed it in connection with the extraordinary mystery of
some of Lord Glenfallen's proceedings, his strange anxiety to exclude me
from certain portions of the mansion, doubtless lest I should encounter
this person--the strong influence, nay, command which she possessed over
him, a circumstance clearly established by the very fact of her residing
in the very place where, of all others, he should least have desired to
find her--her thus acting, and continuing to act in direct contradiction
to his wishes; when, I say, I viewed her disclosure in connection with
all these circumstances, I could not help feeling that there was at
least a fearful verisimilitude in the allegations which she had made.

Still I was not satisfied, nor nearly so. Young minds have a
reluctance almost insurmountable to believing, upon anything short of
unquestionable proof, the existence of premeditated guilt in anyone whom
they have ever trus