picion who the stranger was who called more than an
hour ago?"

"None. The servant told him we saw no visitors, and he went away,
without leaving his name."

"Have you heard from your father?"

She began to turn pale again, but controlled herself bravely, and
answered in a whisper:

"Mrs. Baggs had a short note from him this morning. It was not dated;
and it only said circumstances had happened which obliged him to leave
home suddenly, and that we were to wait here till be wrote again, most
likely in a few days."

"Now, Alicia," I said, as lightly as I could, "I have the highest
possible opinion of your courage, good-sense, and self-control; and I
shall expect you to keep up your reputation in my eyes, while you are
listening to what I have to tell you."

Saying these words, I took her by the hand and made her sit close by me;
then, breaking it to her as gently and gradually as possible, I told her
all that had happened at the red-brick house since the evening when
she left the dinner-table, and we exchanged our parting look at the
dining-room door.

It was almost as great a trial to me to speak as it was to her to hear.
She suffered so violently, felt such evident misery of shame and terror,
while I was relating the strange events which had occurred in her
absence, that I once or twice stopped in alarm, and almost repented my
boldness in telling her the truth. However, fair-dealing with her, cruel
as it might seem at the time, was the best and safest course for the
future. How could I expect her to put all her trust in me if I began
by deceiving her--if I fell into prevarications and excuses at the very
outset of our renewal of intercourse? I went on desperately to the end,
taking a hopeful view of the most hopeless circumstances, and making my
narrative as mercifully short as possible.

When I had done, the poor girl, in the extremity of her forlornness
and distress, forgot all the little maidenly conventionalities and
young-lady-like restraints of everyday life--and, in a burst of natural
grief and honest confiding helplessness, hid her face on my bosom, and
cried there as if she were a child again, and I was the mother to whom
she had been used to look for comfort.

I made no attempt to stop her tears--they were the safest and best vent
for the violent agitation under which she was suffering. I said nothing;
words, at such a ti me as that, would only have aggravated her distress.
All the questions I had