ess to candour of mind.

"But it was not to talk of my affairs that I asked you to call, Allen
Fenwick." As she uttered my name, her voice softened, and her manner
took that maternal, caressing tenderness which had sometimes amused and
sometimes misled me. "No, I do not forget that you asked me to be your
friend, and I take without scruple the license of friendship. What are
these stories that I have heard already about Lilian Ashleigh, to whom
you were once engaged?"

"To whom I am still engaged."

"Is it possible? Oh, then, of course the stories I have heard are all
false. Very likely; no fiction in scandal ever surprises me. Poor dear
Lilian, then, never ran away from her mother's house?"

I smothered the angry pain which this mode of questioning caused me; I
knew how important it was to Lilian to secure to her the countenance
and support of this absolute autocrat; I spoke of Lilian's long previous
distemper of mind; I accounted for it as any intelligent physician,
unacquainted with all that I could not reveal, would account. Heaven
forgive me for the venial falsehood, but I spoke of the terrible charge
against myself as enough to unhinge for a time the intellect of a girl
so acutely sensitive as Lilian; I sought to create that impression as to
the origin of all that might otherwise seem strange; and in this state
of cerebral excitement she had wandered from home--but alone. I had
tracked every step of her way; I had found and restored her to her home.
A critical delirium had followed, from which she now rose, cured in
health, unsuspicious that there could be a whisper against her name. And
then, with all the eloquence I could command, and in words as adapted as
I could frame them to soften the heart of a woman, herself a mother, I
implored Mrs. Poyntz's aid to silence all the cruelties of calumny, and
extend her shield over the child of her own early friend.

When I came to an end, I had taken, with caressing force, Mrs. Poyntz's
reluctant hands in mine. There were tears in my voice, tears in my eyes.
And the sound of her voice in reply gave me hope, for it was unusually
gentle. She was evidently moved. The hope was soon quelled.

"Allen Fenwick," she said, "you have a noble heart; I grieve to see how
it abuses your reason. I cannot aid Lilian Ashleigh in the way you ask.
Do not start back so indignantly. Listen to me as patiently as I have
listened to you. That when you brought back the unfortunate young
woma