'Wrong? There must be wrong you think. Cannot a woman love a man without disgracing herself? You judge of others by your own foul thoughts, young lady."

I felt the hot stream rush scarlet to my face. Here was I, innocent, blurred by contact with my guilty accuser.

"You redden," she pursued; " you can blush, it seems. Aye, well you may. No, I am not Arthur's mistress”. -a most keenly insulting emphasis on the two words-" not but what many noble-hearted women have given up all, name and rank, and what the world calls honour for the man they love. A married women is disinterested, at least, she has all the world to lose for her love, nothing to gain. If she does forsake all for a man, she is better than you girls who sell yourselves to the best bidder in the legal and honourable marriage market, forsooth. Faugh! that is viler than picking oakum or breaking stones. What do you expect your face will fetch? eh, little girl— a peerage? Is that the game you want to play?"

I could endure no more; a lucky thought flashed upon me :

Say what you will of me, I have done nothing that truth and honour forbid, but you-you have set a taint upon Arthur's finger, a ring of your's that none but himself must wear; you would have him keep it, reckoning on your husband's death, to claim him then-to make him marry you. You have a husband, and you pledge yourself to another man. Do you call this right, or wrong? do you call it honourable?"

"Who told you this?—he has betrayed me?"

"No; he has kept the wretched secret; it was not he that told me."

"Who then?"

"My own eyes-yourself betraying yourself, as women who are capable of these things will do."

"Woman! What do you know of woman or man either? What do you suppose you can ever be to Arthur? A stop-gap, a bagatelle pour passer le temps until old Sir John sees fit to take himself out of the way."

I hardly understood the hideous innuendo; but, fain to guard my own fair fame without committing him, I said,

"I am no candidate for any conquest, in any way but what is honourable; I do not believe any man could doubt that, or would treat me otherwise."

"Oh, you believe yourself a paragon of virtue! You would not be Arthur's mistress, not you!-except you were a legalised mistress, and so you would be as his wife. You don't expect he could love you, if you imagine he loves me. What a comparison! His wife, indeed! Men don't marry for a fit of passion!"

Though I shrink at the horrible revelation, some grains of abhorred truth seemed to thrust itself through her words; had he not left me, undefended, to meet this fury? Was this like loving me as I loved him? Had he not always spoken of her with provoking forbearance, whatever cause brought up her name between us? It was plain he knew she loved him, and he was too tender of her feelings for me to assure myself that love could be utterly despised? Was I not indeed a fool? a hopeless one? It might be so, yet if it were possible, I would keep him from her, my abhorred rival!

"Whatever I may be," I said, slowly; "you can be nothing to him, more than a friend-if you call yourself so, you cannot be his wife; though you play dog in the manger all his life long, that gives you no claim upon him."

"No claim upon him? I who have raised him to what he is."

I grew sarcastic: "Then you ought to be glad of anything that could make him happy; you are married yourself. If he were to marry you would be on equal terms, that's all; you could wait till his wife died, you know, instead of making him wait for your husband's death."

"Oh, you cunning young viper! you think to take him from me! from me, whom he loved all his life, since I was a girl; I might have had him then, if I would I might have him, if I would do such a thing, now; the man could not resist me !"

There was a horrible conviction in her words; should I have driven her desperate had I known her power upon him? She went on

"No man, once in love with me, ever got over it yet; no more can he. Yes, yes, I can keep him. You think I will stick at anything, having gone so far? That I will be thwarted by a child?-oh, no, no or a man? Ha ha ha! A woman like me will pierce through stone walls if they stand between her and her will. Weak things men are to contend with. What! their fancies, indeed! I can laugh at them, ha ha! ha!"

She was working herself into hysterical violence, under her simulated defiance of me. I felt, I hoped her power to keep him to a dishonourable tie was less than she assumed; it might be that the demon in her heart should be baffled by my strong and innocent love. I would deal cautiously with her.

"I have no right to answer for Arthur in any way. You have known him long; draw your own conclusions, as you have done hitherto. I have told you nothing."

“Silence and discretion with a vengeance.

I know what you mean

to do; to steal a match with him. Not while I live. I will stop that. I will expose him to the world. I will ruin him, utterly; blast his career with infamy. My husband shall be his enemy and my avenger. I care not what I do to myself, if I cut my own throat. Cross me at your peril, young girl; you shall never marry him till you kill me! We'll see which is the strongest, you or I. Ha! ha! ha!" I thought she was going mad, but she reigned in her frenzy fit, and flung herself out of the room. Lost in terror, I had no sense left to conjecture what form her rage might take, to destroy me, to do that which I feared above all that could happen to me here or hereafter, separate me from him I loved. I was sitting still, not attempting to stir of my own motion, but trembling with a violent, involuntary seizure in every limb, that shook me like winnowing wheat, when Mrs. Heathcote came and found me.

"My child, what have you done to Lady Diana? She will murder you if she can, or blast you before the world; that is the way

that great ladies commit murder of the reputation. I tremble for you."

I fell upon her breast: "Oh, women are like devils to other women when they hate."

"Yes, that's like what Shakespeare says, he was a man.

I say

men are our worst enemies if we give them their way." "Who would have thought it of her, with her soft, blonde beauty?

I never knew there could be so much fury in blue eyes.”

66

I'm

They are the fiercest when provoked. Beware of her! afraid you have been very imprudent. What have you done to her? Oh, I know! You are not to answer any questions. Come upstairs, and write to him, my dear, you shall do whatever you like; only I have got nothing to say to you, I wash my hands; you never took me into your confidence."

"I wish to heaven I could;" and I sank into her arms weeping. Was she not in place of a mother to me? To something in my misery I must cling, as in the sinking ship, or the burning house, when there is none to help, they cling to one another who are about to perish!

(To be continued.)

THE OLD MAID.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF HEDWIG DOHM.

HEN does a young lady turn to an old maid? Difficult would it be to say exactly. Some earlier, some later. When the mother of a marriageable girl leaves off watching her with chaperon eyes, when the other damsels titter at seeing her in a pink dress, when partners have to be hunted up for her at balls, when gentlemen have to be dragged along to talk to her at evening parties, when school-boys make loud observations extolling neither the youth nor beauty of the subject of their attention, when all these things, or any of them, have come about, then our heroine may as well go into mourning for the husband whom she will never get.

I knew a young lady thirty years of age whom no one called an old maid, and I know young ladies of four-and-twenty whom everyone reckons as nothing else than old maids.

The old maid will cease to exist as soon as woman is emancipated from the so-called "woman's sphere." All old maids will not be married after this emancipation, but there will be an end to the race "old maid," notwithstanding.

What is an old maid? When we say an old maid we mean a woman whose condition is pitiable, even in a way painful, whose existence is superfluous, whose being is aimless.

It is not the fact of her singleness which makes us sorry for an old maid. The "old maid" whom we pity, the only real old maid, in fact, is poor and held of little account, and she is the victim of many of the sorrows poverty can inflict on mankind.

There are no rich old maids. No, you say, because rich women

Y