What is it that you havo

"What is it that you want?

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 firelight of the little kitchen, where she had before sat, and ate, and dried her clothes.

"Sit there," said Alice, kneeling down beside her, "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 forgive

"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:

Νο

"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. 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 daughters 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.

"What came of that, I needn't say. Wretched 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?"

"Why do you ask me?" said Harriet.

"Why do you tremble?" rejoined Alice, with an eager look. "His usage made a Devil of me. I sunk in wretched. ness 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 remembrance; 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.

"Why do you tremble?" said Alice, laying her hand upon her arm, and looking in her face, "but that the answer is on your lips! It was your brother James."

Harriet trembled more and more, but did not avert her eyes from the eager look that rested on them.

"When I knew you were his sister-which was on that night-I came back, weary and lame, to spurn your gift. I felt that night as if I could have travelled, weary and lame, over the whole world, to stab him, if I could have found him

in a lonely place with no one near. was earnest in all that?"

Do you believe that I

"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. away! Your touch is dreadful to me!"

"Go

"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!"

"Not yet. A moment more. You can think what my revengeful purpose must have been, to last so long, and urge me to do this?"

"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 nim without reason, and wish to repair what I have done, if it is possible. I wouldn't have them come together 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.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FUGITIVES.

THE time, an hour short of midnight; the place, a French Apartment, comprising some half-dozen rooms;-a dull cold hall or corridor, a dining-room, a drawing-room, a bedchamber, and an inner drawing-room, or boudoir, smaller and more retired than the rest. All these shut in by one large pair of doors on the main staircase, but each room provided with two or three pairs of doors of its own, establishing several means of communication with the remaining portion of the apartment, or with certain small passages within the wall, leading, as is not unusual in such houses, to some back stairs with an obscure outlet below. The whole situated on the first floor of so large an hotel, that it did not absorb one entire row of windows upon one side of the square court-yard in the centre, upon which the whole four sides of the mansion looked.

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 and polished; crimson drapery hung in festoons from window, door, and mirror; and candelabra, gnarled and intertwisted like the branches of trees, or horns of animals, stuck out from the panels of the wall. But in the day-time, when the lattice-blinds (now closely shut) were opened, and the light let in, traces were discernible among this finery, of wear and tear and dust, of sun and damp and smoke, and lengthened intervals of want of use and habitation, when such shows and toys of life seem sensitive like life, and waste as men shut up in prison do. Even night, and clusters of burning candles, could not wholly efface them, though the general glitter threw them in the shade.

The glitter of bright tapers, and their reflection in lookingglasses, scraps of gilding, and gay colors, were confined, on