unhappy Blanche Challoner remained faithful to
her love.

He played fast and loose with her--professing attachment for her in
secret, and visiting at the house; perhaps he feared an outbreak from
her, an exposure that might be anything but pleasant, did he throw off
all relations between them. Blanche summoned up her courage and spoke to
him, urging the marriage; she had not yet glanced at the fear that his
intention of marrying her, had he ever possessed such, was over. Bad men
are always cowards. Sir Francis shrank from an explanation, and so
far forgot honor as to murmur some indistinct promise that the wedding
should be speedy.

Lydia Challoner had married, and been left a widow, well off. She
was Mrs. Waring; and at her house resided Blanche. For the girls were
orphans. Blanche was beginning to show symptoms of her nearly thirty
years; not the years, but the long-continued disappointment, the
heart-burnings, were telling upon her. Her hair was thin, her face was
pinched, her form had lost its roundness. "Marry _her_, indeed!" scoffed
to himself Sir Francis Levison.

There came to Mrs. Waring's upon a Christmas visit a younger sister,
Alice Challoner, a fair girl of twenty years. She resided generally with
an aunt in the country. Far more beautiful was she than Blanche had ever
been, and Francis Levison, who had not seen her since she was a child,
fell--as he would have called it--in love with her. Love! He became her
shadow; he whispered sweet words in her ear; he turned her head giddy
with its own vanity, and he offered her marriage. She accepted him,
and preparations for the ceremony immediately began. Sir Francis urged
speed, and Alice was nothing loth.

And what of Blanche? Blanche was stunned. A despairing stupor took
possession of her; and, when she woke from it, desperation set in. She
insisted upon an interview with Sir Francis, and evade it he could not,
though he tried hard. Will it be believed that he denied the past--that
he met with mocking suavity her indignant reminders of what had been
between them? "Love! Marriage? Nonsense! Her fancy had been too much
at work." Finally, he defied her to prove that he had regarded her with
more than ordinary friendship, or had ever hinted at such a thing as a
union.

She could not prove it. She had not so much as a scrap of paper written
on by him; she had not a single friend or enemy to come forward and
testify that they heard him breathe to her a word of l