oes not sound natural," she said; "it does not sound quite real.
Excuse me, but you would not, merely as a novelist, make your hero try
to back out of an engagement for that reason. If he gave it, the reader
would know at once there was something else--something in the
background. I believe that the amiable heroine would accept the
explanation and go away broken-hearted. But I," said Cynthia, with a
little stamp of impatience--"I am not amiable, and I mean neither to
believe in your explanation nor to break my heart; and so, Mr. Hubert
Lepel, you had better tell me what this is really all about."

"Ah, Cynthia, I had better let you think me a fool or a brute than lead
you into this!" cried Hubert.

"But I should never think you a fool or a brute, whatever you did."

"You do not know what you might think of me--in other circumstances."

"Try," she said, almost in a whisper, slipping her hand into his.

But he shook his head and looked down, knitting his brows uneasily.

"What will satisfy you?" she asked at length, evidently convinced from
his manner that something was more seriously amiss than she had thought.
"Do you not know that where I give my love I give my whole trust and
confidence. More than that, I shall never take it away, even if all the
world told me--even if I had some reason to believe--that you were not
worthy of my trust. Oh, what does the world know of you? I understand
you much better. Can't you see that a woman loves a man for what he is,
and not for what he does?"

"What he does proceeds from what he is, Cynthia, I am afraid," said
Hubert sadly.

"Not always. People are often betrayed into doing things that do not
show their real nature at all," said the girl eagerly. "A man gives way
to a sudden temptation--he strikes a blow--and the world calls him a
ruffian and a murderer; or he takes what belongs to another because he
is starving, and the world calls him a common thief. We cannot judge."

He had drawn away from her, and was resting his arm on the mantelpiece,
and his head upon his arm. A strange vibration passed through his frame
as he listened to her words.

"Do you think, then," he said at last, speaking with difficulty, and
without raising his head, "that you could love a man that the world
condemned, or would condemn, if they knew all--could you love a man who
was an outcast, a felon, a--a murderer?"

"I am sure that I could," said Cynthia fervently. For the moment she was
not thi