d
distrust. I cannot think him altogether the calm and pure being
he appears. Madeline, I have asked myself again and again, is this
suspicion the effect of jealousy? do I scan his bearing with the
jaundiced eye of disappointed rivalship? And I have satisfied my
conscience that my judgment is not thus biassed. Stay! listen yet a
little while! You have a high--a thoughtful mind. Exert it now. Consider
your whole happiness rests on one step! Pause, examine, compare!
Remember, you have not of Aram, as of those whom you have hitherto mixed
with, the eye-witness of a life! You can know but little of his real
temper, his secret qualities; still less of the tenor of his former
life. I only ask of you, for your own sake, for my sake, your sister's
sake, and your good father's, not to judge too rashly! Love him, if you
will; but observe him!"

"Have you done?" said Madeline, who had hitherto with difficulty
contained herself; "then hear me. Was it I? was it Madeline Lester whom
you asked to play the watch, to enact the spy upon the man whom she
exults in loving? Was it not enough that you should descend to mark down
each incautious look--to chronicle every heedless word--to draw dark
deductions from the unsuspecting confidence of my father's friend--to
lie in wait--to hang with a foe's malignity upon the unbendings of
familiar intercourse--to extort anger from gentleness itself, that
you might wrest the anger into crime! Shame, shame upon you, for the
meanness! And must you also suppose that I, to whose trust he has given
his noble heart, will receive it only to play the eavesdropper to its
secrets? Away!"

The generous blood crimsoned the cheek and brow of this high-spirited
girl as she uttered her galling reproof; her eyes sparkled, her lip
quivered, her whole frame seemed to have grown larger with the majesty
of indignant love.

"Cruel, unjust, ungrateful!" ejaculated Walter, pale with rage, and
trembling under the conflict of his roused and wounded feelings. "Is it
thus you answer the warning of too disinterested and self-forgetful a
love?"

"Love!" exclaimed Madeline. "Grant me patience!--Love! It was but now I
thought myself honoured by the affection you said you bore me. At this
instant, I blush to have called forth a single sentiment in one who
knows so little what love is! Love!--methought that word denoted all
that was high and noble in human nature--confidence, hope,
devotion, sacrifice of all thought of self! b