you have let out the motive of this wicked slander.
You love me yourself; Heaven forgive me for profaning the name of love!"

"Heaven forgive you for blaspheming the purest, fondest love that ever
one creature laid at the feet of another. Yes, Helen Rolleston, I love
you; and will save you from the grave and from the villain Wardlaw; both
from one and the other."

"Oh," said Helen, clinching her teeth, "I hope this is true; I hope you do
love me, you wretch; then I may find a way to punish you for belying the
absent, and stabbing me to the heart, through him."

Her throat swelled with a violent convulsion, and she could utter no more
for a moment; and she put her white handkerchief to her lips, and drew it
away discolored slightly with blood.

"Ah! you love me," she cried; "then know, for your comfort, that you have
shortened my short life a day or two, by slandering him to my face, you
monster. Look there at your love, and see what it has done for me."

She put the handkerchief under his eyes, with hate gleaming in her own.

Mr. Hazel turned ashy pale, and glared at it with horror; he could have
seen his own shed with stoical firmness; but a mortal sickness struck his
heart at the sight of her blood. His hands rose and quivered in a
peculiar way, his sight left him, and the strong man, but tender lover,
staggered, and fell heavily on the deck, in a dead swoon, and lay at her
feet pale and motionless.

She uttered a scream, and sailors came running.

They lifted him, with rough sympathy; and Helen Rolleston retired to her
cabin, panting with agitation. But she had little or no pity for the
slanderer. She read Arthur Wardlaw's letter again, kissed it, wept over
it, reproached herself for not having loved the writer enough; and vowed
to repair that fault. "Poor slandered Arthur," said she; "from this hour
I will love you as devotedly as you love me."

CHAPTER IX.

AFTER this, Helen Rolleston and Mr. Hazel never spoke. She walked past
him on the deck with cold and haughty contempt.

He quietly submitted to it; and never presumed to say one word to her
again. Only, as his determination was equal to his delicacy, Miss
Rolleston found, one day, a paper on her table, containing advice as to
the treatment of disordered lungs, expressed with apparent coldness, and
backed by a string of medical authorities, quoted _memoriter._

She sent this back directly, indorsed with a line, in pencil, that she
would try hard