our during her sickness, but on
hearing Mr. Maitland's report, her parents both felt assured it was for
that information she pined, and therefore determined on instantly giving
her relief.

It was with the utmost tenderness and caution Mr. Hamilton alluded to
the subject, and seating himself by her couch, playfully asked her if
she would promise him to get well the sooner, if he gratified her by the
pleasing intelligence that Arthur Myrvin's character was cleared, that
his enemy had been discovered, his designs exposed, and himself obliged
to leave the village, and the whole population were now as violently
prejudiced in Arthur's favour, as they had formerly been against him;
provoked also with themselves for their blind folly in receiving and
encouraging the idle reports propagated against him, not one of which
they now perceived were sufficiently well founded to stand before an
impartial statement and accurate examination.

Had her parents doubted what had weighed on Emmeline's mind, the sudden
light beaming in those saddened eyes, the flush kindling on those pale
cheeks, the rapid movement with which she caught her father's hand, and
looked in his face, as if fearful he would deceive her, all these minute
but striking circumstances must have betrayed the truth. In a voice
almost inarticulate from powerful emotion, she implored him to tell her
every particular, and tenderly he complied.

He had followed, he said, her advice, and confronted Nurse Langford with
the unprincipled man who had dared accuse a fellow-creature of a crime
in reality committed by himself, and reckless as he was, he had shrunk
in guilt and shame before her accusation, which was indeed the
accusation of the dying, and avowing himself the real perpetrator of the
sin, offered her a large bribe for secrecy, which, as might be expected,
the widow indignantly refused. It was easy to perceive, his arts had
worked on the old woman, Mary's grandmother, to believe him her friend
and Arthur her foe; the poor old creature's failing intellect assisted
his plans, while the reports he had insidiously circulated against the
unfortunate young man also confirmed his tale. Little aware that the
Widow Langford had been almost a mother to the poor girl his villainy
had ruined, and that she was likely to have heard the truth, being quite
unconscious she had attended her dying moments, he published this
falsehood, without any feeling of remorse or shame, hoping by so