don't know that the first might have been binding alone; but one has no business to take credit for good intentions, and I made up my mind, at all events, not to disclose myself until I should be able to do you some real service or other. My second reason was, that I always hoped there might be some lingering possibility of your brother's relenting to. wards you both; and in that case, I felt that where there was the chance of a man of his suspicious, watchful character, discovering that you had been secretly befriended by me, there was the chance of a new and fatal cause of division. I resolved, to be sure, at the risk of turning his displeasure against myself-which would have been no matter to watch my opportunity of serving you with the head of the House; but the distractions of death, courtship, marriage, and domestic unhappiness, have left us no head but your brother for this long, long time. And it would have been better for us," said the visitor, dropping his voice, “to have been a lifeless trunk."

He seemed conscious that these latter words had escaped him against his will, and, stretching out a hand to the brother, and a hand to the sister, continued:

"All I could desire to say, and more, I have now said. All I mean goes beyond words, as I hope you understand and believe. The time has come, John-though most unfortunately and unhappily come-when I may help you without interfering with that redeeming struggle, which has lasted through so many years; since you were discharged "from it to-day by no act of your own. It is late; I nced say no more to-night. You will guard the treasure you have here, without advice or reminder from me."

With these words he rose to go.

"But go you first, John," he said good-humouredly, "with a light, without saying what you want to say, whatever that may be;" John Carker's heart was full, and he would have relieved it in speech, if he could; "and let me have a word with your sister. We have talked alone before, and in this room too; though it looks more natural with you here."

Following him out with his eyes, he turned kindly to Harriet, and said in a lower voice, and with an altered and graver manner:

"You wish to ask me something of the man whose sister it is your misfortune to be." "I dread to ask," said Harriet.

"You have looked so earnestly at me more than once," rejoined the visitor, "that I think I can divine your question. Has he taken money? Is it that ?"

66 Yes."

"He has not."

I thank heaven!" said Harriet. "For the sake of John."

"That he has abused his trust in many ways," said Mr. Morfin: "that he has oftener dealt and speculated to advantage for himself, than for the House he represented; that he has led the House on, to prodigious ventures, often resulting in enormous losses; that he has always pampered the vanity and ambition of his employer, when it was his duty to have held them in check, and shown, as it was in his power to do, to what they tended here and there; will not perhaps surprise you now. Undertakings have been entered on, to swell the repufation of the House for vast resources, and to exhibit it in magnificent contrast to other merchants'

houses, of which it requires a steady head to contemplate the possibly a few disastrous changes of affairs might render them the probably-ruinous consequences. In the midst of the many transac tions of the House, in most parts of the world: a great labyrinth of which only he has held the clue: he has had the opportunity, and he seems to have used it, of keeping the various results afloat, when ascertained, and substituting estimates and gener alities for facts. But latterly-you follow me, Miss Harriet?"

"Perfectly, perfectly," she answered, with her frightened face fixed on his, "Pray tell me all the worst at once."

"Latterly, he appears to have devoted the greatest pains to making these results so plain and clear, that reference to the private books enables one to grasp them, numerous and varying as they are, with extraordinary ease. As if he had resolved to show his employer at one broad view what has been brought upon him by ministration to his ruling pas. sion! That it has been his constant practice to minister to that passion basely, and to flatter it corruptly, is indubitable. In that, his criminality, as it is connected with the affairs of the House, chiefly consists."

"One other word before you leave me, dear Sir," said Harriet. "There is no danger in all this?" "How danger?" he returned, with a little hesitation.

"To the credit of the House?"

"I cannot help answering you plainly, and trust. ing you completely," said Mr. Morfin, after a moment's survey of her face.

"You may. Indeed you may!"

"I am sure I may. Danger to the House's credit? No; none. There may be difficulty, greater or less difficulty, but no danger, unless-unless, indeed-the head of the House, unable to bring his mind to the reduction of its enterprises, and positively refusing to believe that it is, or can be, in any position but the position in which he has always represented it to himself, should urge it beyond its strength. Then it would totter."

"But there is no apprehension of that?" said Harriet.

"There shall be no half-confidence,” he replied, shaking her hand, "between us. Mr. Dombey 13 unapproachable by any one, and his state of mind is haughty, rash, unreasonable, and ungovernable now. But he is disturbed and agitated now beyond all common bounds, and it may pass. You now know all, both worst and best. No more to-night, and good night!"

With that he kissed her hand, and passing out to the door where her brother stood awaiting his coming, put him cheerfully aside when he essayed to speak; told him that as they would see each other soon and often, he might speak at another time, if he would, but there was no leisure for it then; and went away at a round pace, in order that no word of gratitude might follow him.

The brother and sister sat conversing by the tireside, until it was almost day; made sleepless by this glimpse of the new world that opened before them, and feeling like two people shipwrecked long ago, upon a solitary coast, to whom a ship had come at last, when they were old in resignation, and had lost all thought of any other home. But another and different kind of disquietude kept them waking too. The darkness out of which this light had

broken on them, gathered around; and the shadow of their guilty brother was in the house where his foot had never trod.

Nor was it to be driven out, nor did it fade before the sun. Next morning it was there; at noon; at night. Darkest and most distinct at night, as is now to be told.

John Carker had gone out, in pursuance of a letter of appointment from their friend, and Harriet was left in the house alone. She had been alone, some hours. A dull, grave evening, and a deepening twilight, were not favourable to the removal of the oppression on her spirits. The idea of this brother, long unseen and unknown, flitted about her in frightful shapes. He was dead, dying, calling to her, staring at her, frowning on her. The pictures in her mind were so obtrusive and exact, that as the twilight deepened, she dreaded to raise her head and look at the dark corners of the room, lest his wraith, the offspring of her excited imagination, should be waiting there to startle her. Once, she had such a fancy of his being in the next room, hiding-though she knew quite well what a distempered fancy it was, and had no belief in it-that she forced herself to go there, for her own conviction. But in vain. The room resumed its shadowy terrors, the moment she left it; and she had no more power to divest herself of these vague impressions of dread, than if they had been stone giants, rooted in the solid earth.

It was almost dark, and she was sitting near the window, with her head upon her hand, looking down, when, sensible of a sudden increase in the gloom of the apartment, she raised her eyes, and uttered an involuntary cry. Close to the glass, a pale scared face gazed in; vacantly, for an instant, as searching for an object; then the eyes rested on herself, and lighted up.

"Let me in! Let me in! I want to speak to you!" and the hand rattled on the glass.

She recognized immediately the woman with the long dark hair, to whom she had given warmth, food, and shelter, one wet night. Naturally afraid of her, remembering her violent behaviour, Harriet, retreating a little from the window, stood undecided and alarmed.

"Let me in! Let me speak to you! I am thankful-quiet-humble-anything you like. But let me speak to you."

The vehement manner of the entreaty, the earnest expression of the face, the trembling of the two hands that were raised imploringly, a certain dread and terror in the voice akin to her own condition at the moment, prevailed with Harriet. She hastened to the door and opened it.

"May I come in, or shall I speak here ?" said the woman, catching at her hand.

"What is it that you want? What is it that you have to say?"

"Not much, but let me say it out, or I shall never say it. I am tempted now to go away. There seem to be hands dragging me from the door. Let me come in, if you can trust me for this once !"

Her energy again prevailed, and they passed into the fire-light of the little kitchen, where she had before sat, and ate, and dried her clothes.

"Sit there," said Alice, kneeling down beside ber," and look at me. You remember me?" "I do."

"You remember what I told you I had been, and

where I came from, ragged and lame, with the fierce wind and weather beating on my head?" "Yes."

"You know how I came back that night, and threw your money in the dirt, and cursed you and your race. Now, see me here, upon my knees. Am I less earnest now, than I was then ?""

"If what you ask," said Harriet, gently, "is forgiveness-"

"But it's not!" returned the other, with a proud, fierce look. "What I ask is, to be believed. Now you shall judge if I am worthy of belief, both as I was, and as I am."

Still upon her knees, and with her eyes upon the fire, and the fire shining on her ruined beauty and her wild black hair, one long tress of which she pulled over her shoulder, and wound about her hand, and thoughtfully bit and tore while speaking, she went on:

"When I was young and pretty, and this," plucking contemptuously at the hair she held, was only handled delicately, and couldn't be admired enough, my mother, who had not been very mindful of me as a child, found out my merits, and was fond of me, and proud of me. She was covetous and poor, and thought to make a sort of property of me. No great lady ever thought that of a daughter yet, I'm sure, or acted as if she did—it's never done, we all know-and that shows that the only instances of mothers bringing up their daugh. ters wrong, and evil coming of it, are among such miserable folks as us."

Looking at the fire, as if she were forgetful, for the moment, of having any auditor, she continued in a dreamy way, as she wound the long tress of hair tight round and round her hand. Wretched

"What came of that, I needn't say. marriages don't come of such things, in our degree; only wretchedness and ruin. Wretchedness and ruin came on me-came on me." Raising her eyes swiftly from their moody gaze upon the fire, to Harriet's face, she said

"I am wasting time, and there is none to spare; yet if I hadn't thought of all, I shouldn't be here now. Wretchedness and ruin came on me, I say. I was made a short-lived toy, and flung aside more cruelly and carelessly than even such things are. By whose hand do you think?"

66

Why do you ask me?" said Harriet.

66

Why do you tremble?" rejoined Alice, with an eager look. "His usage made a Devil of me. I sunk in wretchedness and ruin, lower and lower yet. I was concerned in a robbery-in every part of it but the gains-and was found out, and sent to be tried, without a friend, without a penny. Though I was but a girl, I would have gone to Death, sooner than ask him for a word, if a word of his could have saved me. I would! To any death that could have been invented. But my mother, covetous always, sent to him in my name, told the true story of my case, and humbly prayed and petitioned for a small last gift for not so many pounds as I have fingers on this hand. Who was it do you think, who snapped his fingers at me in my misery, lying, as he believed, at his feet, and left me without even this poor sign of remem. brance; well satisfied that I should be sent abroad, beyond the reach of further trouble to him, and should die, and rot there? Who was this, do you think?"

"Why do you ask me?" repeated Harriet.

"I do! Good Heaven, why are you come again?"

"Since then," said Alice, with the same grasp of her arm, and the same look in her face, "I have seen him! I have followed him with my eyes, in the broad day. If any spark of my resentment slumbered in my bosom, it sprung into a blaze when my eyes rested on him. You know he has wronged a proud man, and made him his deadly enemy. What if I had given information of him to that man?"

"Information!" repeated Harriet.

"What if I had found out one who knew your brother's secret; who knew the manner of his flight; who knew where he and the companion of his flight were gone? What if I had made him utter all his knowledge, word by word, before this enemy, concealed to hear it? What if I had sat by at the time, looking into this enemy's face, and seeing it change till it was scarcely human? What if I had seen him rush away, mad, in pursuit? What if I knew, now, that he was on his road, more fiend than man, and must, in so many hours, come up with him?"

"Remove your hand!" said Harriet, recoiling. "Go away! Your touch is dreadful to me!"

"I have done this," pursued the other, with her eager look, regardless of the interruption. "Do I speak and look as if I really had? Do you believe what I am saying?"

"I fear I must. Let my arm go!"

"Dreadful!" said Harriet.

"Then when you see me now," said Alice, hoarsely, "here again, kneeling quietly on the ground, with my touch upon your arm, with my eyes upon your face, you may believe that there is no common earnestness in what I say, and that no common struggle has been battling in my breast. I am ashamed to speak the words, but I relent. I despise myself; I have fought with myself all day, and all last night; but I relent towards him without reason, and wish to repair what I have done, if it is possible. I wouldn't have them come toge. ther while his pursuer is so blind, and headlong. If you had seen him as he went out last night, you would know the danger better."

"How shall it be prevented! What can I do!" cried Harriet.

"All night long," pursued the other, hurriedly, "I had dreams of him—and yet I didn't sleep-in his blood. All day, I have had him near me."

"What can I do!" said Harriet, shuddering at these words.

"If there is any one who 'll write, or send, or go to him, let them lose no time. He is at Dijon. Do you know the name, and where it is?" "Yes!"

"Warn him that the man he has made his enemy is in a frenzy, and that he doesn't know him if he makes light of his approach. Tell him that he is on the road-I know he is! and hurrying on. Urge him to get away while there is time-if there is time--and not to meet him yet. A month or so, will make years of difference. Let them not encounter, through me. Anywhere but there! Any time but now! Let his foe follow him, and find him for himself, but not through me! There is enough upon my head without."

The fire ceased to be reflected in her jet black hair, uplifted face, and eager eyes; her hand was gone from Harriet's arm; and the place where she had been, was empty.

An air of splendour, sufficiently faded to be melancholy, and sufficiently dazzling to clog and embarrass the details of life with a show of state, reigned in these rooms. The walls and ceilings were gilded and painted; the floors were waxed

The men-the second of whom was a dark, bilious subject, in a jacket, close shaved, and with a black head of hair close cropped - had completed their preparation of the table, and were standing looking at it. He who had spoken before, inquired whether Madame thought it would be long before Monsieur arrived?

The glitter of bright tapers, and their reflection in looking-glasses, scraps of gilding, and gay colours, were confined, on this night, to one roomthat smaller room within the rest, just now enumerated. Seen from the hall, where a lamp was feebly burning, through the dark perspective of open doors, it looked as shining and precious as a gem. In the heart of its radiance sat a beautiful woman-Edith.

She was alone. The same defiant, scornful woman still. The cheek a little worn, the eye a little larger in appearance, and more lustrous, but the haughty bearing just the same. No shame upon her brow; no late repentance bending her disdainful neck. Imperious and stately yet, and yet regardless of herself and of all else, she sat with her dark eyes cast down, waiting for some one.

No book, no work, no occupation of any kind but her own thoughts, beguiled the tardy time. Some purpose, strong enough to fill up any pause, possessed her. With her lips pressed together, and quivering if for a moment she released them from her control; with her nostril inflated; her hands clasped in one another; and her purpose swelling in her breast; she sat, and waited.

At the sound of a key in the outer door, and a footstep in the hall, she started up, and cried "Who's that?" The answer was in French, and two men came in with jingling trays, to make preparation for supper.

"Who had bade them do so?" she asked. "Monsieur had commanded it, when it was his pleasure to take the apartment. Monsieur had said, when he stayed there, for an hour, en route, and left the letter for Madame- Madame had received it, surely?"

"Yes."

"A thousand pardons! The sudden apprehension that it might have been forgotten had struck him;" a bald man, with a large beard, from a neighbouring restaurant; "with despair! Monsieur had said that supper was to be ready at that hour: also that he had forewarned Madame of the commands he had given, in his letter. Monsieur had done the Golden Head the honour to request that the supper should be choice and delicate. Monsieur would find that his confidence in the Golden Head was not misplaced."

Edith said no more, but looked on thoughtfully while they prepared the table for two persons, and set the wine upon it. She arose before they had finished, and taking a lamp, passed into the bed. chamber and into the drawing-room, where she hurriedly but narrowly examined all the doors; particularly one in the former room that opened on the passage in the wall. From this she took

"She could n't say. It was all one."

"Pardon! There was the supper! It should be eaten on the instant. Monsieur (who spoke French like an Angel-or a Frenchman-it was all the same) had spoken with great emphasis of his punctuality. But the English nation had so grand a genius for punctuality. Ah! what noise! Great Heaven, here was Monsieur. Behold him!"

In effect, Monsieur, admitted by the other of the two, came, with his gleaming teeth, through the dark rooms, like a mouth; and arriving in that sanctuary of light and colour, a figure at full length, embraced Madame, and addressed her in the French tongue as his charming wife.

66

My God! Madame is going to faint. Madame is overcome with joy!" The bald man with the beard observed it, and cried out.

Madame had only shrunk and shivered. Before the words were spoken, she was standing with her hand upon the velvet back of a great chair; her. figure drawn up to its full height, and her face im. moveable.

"François has flown over to the Golden Head for supper. He flies on these occasions like an angel or a bird. The baggage of Monsieur is in his room. All is arranged. The supper will be here this moment." These facts the bald man notified with bows and smiles, and presently the supper came.

The hot dishes were on a chafing-dish; the cold already set forth, with the change of service on a side-board. Monsieur was satisfied with this arrangement. The supper table being small, it pleased him very well. Let them set the chafing. dish upon the floor, and go. He would remove the dishes with his own hands.

"Pardon!" said the bald man, politely. "It was impossible!"

Monsieur was of another opinion. He required no further attendance that night.

"But Madame"- the bald man hinted. "Madame," replied Monsieur, "had her own maid. It was enough."

"A million pardons! No! Madame had no maid!"

"I came here alone," said Edith. "It was my choice to do so. I am well used to travelling; I want no attendance. They need send nobody to me."

Monsieur accordingly, persevering in his first proposed impossibility, proceeded to follow the two attendants to the outer door, and secure it after them for the night. The bald man turning round to bow, as he went out, observed that Madame still stood with her hand upon the velvet back of the great chair, and that her face was quite regardless of him, though she was looking straight before her.

As the sound of Carker's fastening the door, resounded through the intermediate rooms, and seemed to come hushed and stifled into that last

Her tone was so harsh; the quick turn of her head so fierce; her attitude so repellant; and her frown so black; that he stood, with the lamp in his hand, looking at her, as if she had struck him motionless.

"I say," he at length repeated, putting down the lamp and smiling his most courtly smile, "how strange to come here alone! It was unnecessary caution surely, and might have defeated itself. You were to have engaged an attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of time for the purpose, though you had been the most capricious and difficult (as you are the most beautiful, my love)

of women."

Her eyes gleamed strangely on him, but she stood with her hand resting on the chair, and said not a word.

"I have never," resumed Carker," seen you look so handsome, as you do to-night. Even the picture I have carried in my mind during this cruel probation, and which I have contemplated night and day, is exceeded by the reality."

Not a word. Not a look. Her eyes completely hidden by their drooping lashes, but her head held up.

"Hard, unrelenting terms they were!" said Carker, with a smile, "but they are all fulfilled and past, and make the present more delicious and more safe. Sicily shall be the place of our retreat. In the idlest and easiest part of the world, my soul, we'll both seek compensation for old slavery."

He was coming gaily towards her, when, in an instant, she caught the knife up from the table, and started one pace back.

"Stand still!" she said, "or I shall murder you!"

The sudden change in her, the towering fury and intense abhorrence sparkling in her eyes and lighting up her brow, made him stop as if a fire had stopped him.

"Stand still!" she said, "come no nearer me, upon your life!"

They both stood looking at each other. Rage and astonishmont were in his face, but he controlled them, and said slightly,

Come, come! Tush, we are alone, and out of everybody's sight and hearing. Do you think to frighten me with these tricks of virtue ?"

"Do you think to frighten me," she answered fiercely, "from any purpose that I have, and any course I am resolved upon, by reminding me of the solitude of this place, and there being no help near? Me who am here alone, designedly? If I feared you, should I not have avoided you? If I feared you, should I be here, in the dead of night, telling you to your face what I am going to tell?"

"And what is that," he said, "you handsome shrew? Handsomer so, than any other woman in

her best humour ?"

"I tell you nothing," she returned, "until you go back to that chair-except this, once againDon't come near me! Not a step nearer. I tell you, if you do, as Heaven sees us, I shall murder you!"

"Do you mistake me for your husband?" he retorted, with a grin.

Disdaining to reply, she stretched her arm out, pointing to the chair. He bit his lip, frowned, laughed, and sat down in it, with a baffled, irresolute, impatient air, he was unable to conceal; and biting his nail nervously, and looking at her sideways, with bitter discomfiture, even while he feigned to be ainused by her caprice.

She put the knife down upon the table, and touching her bosom with her hand, said:

"I have something lying here, that is no love trinket; and sooner than endure your touch once more, I would use it on you-and you know it, while I speak with less reluctance than I would on any other creeping thing that lives."

He affected to laugh jestingly, and entreated her to act her play out quickly, for the supper was growing cold. But the secret look with which he regarded her, was more sullen and lowering, and he struck his foot once upon the floor with a muttered oath.

"How many times," said Edith, bending her darkest glance upon him, "has your bold knavery assailed me with outrage and insult? How many times in your smooth manner, and mocking words and looks, have I been twitted with my courtship and my marriage? How many times have you laid bare my wound of love for that sweet, injured girl, and lacerated it? How often have you fanned the fire on which, for two years, I have writhed; and tempted me to take a desperate revenge, when it has most tortured me?"

"I have no doubt, Ma'am," he replied, " that you have kept a good account, and that it's pretty ac curate. Come, Edith. To your husband, poor wretch, this was well enough"

"Why, if," she said, surveying him with a haughty contempt and disgust, that he shrunk under, let him brave it as he would, "if all my other reasons for despising him could have been blown away like feathers, his having you for his counsellor and favourite, would have almost been enough to hold their place."

"Is that a reason why you have run away with me?" he asked her, tauntingly.

"Yes, and why we are face to face for the last time. Wretch! We meet to-night, and part tonight. For not one moment after I have ceased to speak, will I stay here!"

He turned upon her with his ugliest look, and griped the table with his hand; but neither rose, nor otherwise answered or threatened her.

"I am a woman," she said, confronting him stedfastly, "who from her very childhood, has been shamed and steeled. I have been offered and rejected, put up and appraised, until my very soul has sickened. I have not had an accomplishment or grace that might have been a resource to me, but it has been paraded and vended to enhance my value, as if the common crier had called it through the streets. My poor, proud friends, have looked on and approved; and every tie between us has been deadened in my breast. There is not one of them for whom I care, as I could care for a petdog. I stand alone in the world, remembering