and of benevolence, when in reality you were
bound to a disgraceful assignation? What veteran _intriguante_ ever
arranged any thing more coolly, more deliberately? Even if the story of
that man's being your father were not false, what trust could I ever
repose in one so skilled in deception, so artful, and so perfidious?"

"Ernest, you will rue what you say now, to your dying day; you will rue
it at the judgment bar of heaven; you are doing me the cruellest wrong
man ever inflicted on woman."

The burning current in my veins was cooling,--a chill, benumbing sense
of injustice and injury was settling on every feeling. I looked in his
face, and its classic beauty vanished, even its lineaments seemed
changed, the illusion of love was passing away; with indescribable
horror I felt this; it was like the opening of a deep, dark abyss. Take
away my love for Ernest, and what would be left of life?
Darkness--despair--annihilation. I thought not, recked not then of his
lost love for me; I only dreaded ceasing to love _him_, dreaded that
congelation of the heart more terrible than death.

"Where is the note?" he asked suddenly. "Show me the warrant for this
secret meeting."

"I destroyed it."

Again a thunder-gust swept over his countenance. I ought to have kept
it, I ought to have anticipated a moment like this, but my judgment was
obscure by fear.

"You destroyed it!"

"Yes; and well might I dread a disclosure which has brought on a scene
so humbling to us both. Let it not continue; you have heard from me
nothing but plain and holy truth; I have nothing to say in my defence.
Had I acted differently, you yourself would despise and condemn me."

"Had you come to me as you ought to have done, asking my counsel and
assistance, I would have met the wretch who sought to beguile you; I
would have detected the imposter, if you indeed believed the tale; I
would have saved you from the shame of a public exposure, and myself the
misery, the tortures of this hour."

"Did he not threaten your life and his own? Did he not appeal to me in
the most solemn and awful manner not to betray him?"

"You might have known the man who urged you to deceive your husband to
be a villain."

"Alas! alas! I know him to be a villain; and yet he is my father."

"He is not your father! I know he is not. I would swear it before a
court of justice. I would swear it before the chancery of the skies!"

"Would to heaven that your words were true. Woul