_they_? the midnight
assassins of reputation, who lurk in the by-lanes of society, with
dagger tongues sharpened by invention and envenomed by malice, to draw
the blood of innocence, and, hyena-like, banquet on the dead? Who are
_they_? They are a multitude no man can number, black-stoled familiars
of the inquisition of slander, searching for victims in every city,
town, and village, wherever the heart of humanity throbs, or the ashes
of mortality find rest.

Oh, coward, coward world--skulkers! Give me the bold brigand, who
thunders along the highways with flashing weapon that cuts the sunbeams
as well as the shades. Give me the pirate, who _unfurls_ the black flag,
emblem of his terrible trade, and _shows_ the plank which your doomed
feet must tread; but save me from the _they-sayers_ of society, whose
knives are hidden in a velvet sheath, whose bridge of death, is woven of
flowers; and who spread, with invisible poison, even the spotless
whiteness of the winding-sheet.

CHAPTER XXI.

"Gabriella, awake!"

"Mother, is the day dawning?"

"My child, the sun is near his setting; you have slumbered long."

I dreamed it was my mother's voice that awakened me,--then it seemed the
voice of Richard Clyde, and I was lying under the great shadow of the
oak, where he had found me years before half drowned in tears.

"Gabriella, my dear,--it is time to dress for the evening."

This time I recognized the accents of Mrs. Linwood, and I rose at once
to a sitting position, wondering if it were the rising or the declining
day that shone around me. Sleep had left its down on my harassed
spirits, and its balm on my aching head. I felt languid, but tranquil;
and when Mrs. Linwood affectionately but decidedly urged upon me the
necessity of rising and preparing to descend to the drawing-room, I
submissively obeyed. She must have seen that I had been in tears, but
she made no allusion to them. Her manner was unusually kind and tender;
but there was an expression in her serene but commanding eye, that bade
me rise superior to the weakness that had subdued me. Had her son spoken
of the cause of my emotion?

A few moments after, Edith entered, and her mother rejoined her friends
below.

Edith held in her hand a fresh bouquet of the most exquisite green-house
plants, among which the scarlet geranium exhibited its glowing blossoms.
She held it towards me, turned it like a prism in various directions to
catch the changing rays