me here, for I know all
about you.'

But the intruder only put his hand upon his heart, and declared that he
had been misrepresented; and let a cruel world think of him as it
might, there was one breast in which he could not bear that a false
opinion, of him should prevail. And therewith he reached a chair, and
Charlotte found herself seated and listening to him, neither believing,
nor wishing to believe him, longing that he would take himself away,
but bewildered by his rhetoric. In the first place, he had been
hastily judged; he had perhaps yielded too much to Sir Walter--but
youth, &c.; and when Lady Conway's means were in his hands, it had
seemed better--he knew now that it had been a weakness, but so he had
judged at the time--to supply the young gentleman's little occasions,
than to make an eclat. Moreover, if he had not been the most
unfortunate wretch in the world, a few lucky hits would have enabled
him to restore the whole before Lord Fitzjocelyn hurried on the
inquiry; but the young gentleman thought he acted for the best, and Mr.
Delaford magnanimously forgave him.

Charlotte could not follow through half the labyrinth; and sat pinching
the corner of her apron, with a vague idea that perhaps he was not so
bad as was supposed; but what would happen if her master should find
him there? She never looked up, nor made any answer, till he began to
give her a piteous account of his condition; how he did not know where
to turn, nor what to do; and was gradually beginning to sell off his
'little wardrobe to purchase the necessaries of life.' Then the
contrast began to tell on her soft heart, and she looked up with a
sound of compassion.

In the wreck of his fortunes and hopes, he had thought of her; he knew
she had too generous a spirit to crush a wretch trodden down by
adversity, who had loved her truly, and who had once had some few hopes
of requital. Those were, alas! at an end; yet still he saw that
'woman, lovely woman, in our hours of ease'--And here he stumbled in
his quotation, but the fact was, that his hopes being blasted in
England, he had decided on trying his fortune in another hemisphere;
but, unfortunately, he had not even sufficient means to pay for a
passage of the humblest description, and if he could venture to entreat
for a--in fact, a loan--it should be most faithfully and gratefully
restored the moment the fickle goddess should smile on him.

Charlotte felt a gleam of joy at the pros