than the rest of them. If you have come to speak to me
about that blackguard young Socialist, understand, if you please, that
I am not so easily imposed upon as Miss Regina. I have done my duty;
I have opened her eyes to the truth, poor thing. Ah, you ought to be
ashamed of yourself."

Rufus kept his temper, with his habitual self-command. "It's possible
you may be right," he said quietly; "but the biggest rascal living has
a claim to an explanation, when a lady puzzles him. Have you any
particular objection, old friend, to tell me what you mean?"

The explanation was not of a nature to set his mind at ease.

Regina had written, by the mail which took Rufus to England, repeating
to Mrs. Payson what had passed at the interview in the Champs Elysees,
and appealing to her sympathy for information and advice. Receiving
the letter that morning, Mrs. Payson, acting on her own generous and
compassionate impulses, had already answered it, and sent it to the
post. Her experience of the unfortunate persons received at the Home was
far from inclining her to believe in the innocence of a runaway girl,
placed under circumstances of temptation. As an act of justice towards
Regina, she enclosed to her the letter in which Amelius had acknowledged
that Sally had passed the night under his roof.

"I believe I am only telling you the shameful truth," Mrs. Payson
had written, "when I add that the girl has been an inmate of Mr.
Goldenheart's cottage ever since. If you can reconcile this disgraceful
state of things, with Mr. Rufus Dingwell's assertion of his friend's
fidelity to his marriage-engagement, I have no right, and no wish,
to make any attempt to alter your opinion. But you have asked for my
advice, and I must not shrink from giving it. I am bound as an honest
woman, to tell you that your uncle's resolution to break off the
engagement represents the course that I should have taken myself, if
a daughter of my own had been placed in your painful and humiliating
position."

There was still ample time to modify this strong expression of opinion
by the day's post. Rufus appealed vainly to Mrs. Payson to reconsider
the conclusion at which she had arrived. A more charitable and
considerate woman, within the limits of her own daily routine, it would
not be possible to find. But the largeness of mind which, having long
and trustworthy experience of a rule, can nevertheless understand that
other minds may have equal experience of the exc