er lover
of low degree, and that both were still innocently dear to her.

All the while that the story had been welling forth from her lips, that
inner instinct which so seldom deceives, told her that she was doing
wrong; and when she had ended, she would have given worlds not to have
spoken. But the words were beyond recall, and she could only gaze
stealthily at the listener, and, with a dull feeling of apprehension
nestling at the bottom of her heart, endeavor to mark their effect, and
to imagine the possible consequences of her indiscretion. But Leta sat
bending over her embroidery, and apparently still thinking, with tearful
eye, upon her own exile from home. Perhaps she had not even heard all
that had been said to her; though, if the words had really caught her
ear, where, after all, could be the harm? It was no secret in Rome that
Sergius Vanno had brought his spouse from a lowly home; and it was
surely no crime, that, during those years of poverty which AEnone had
passed through before being called to fill her present station, she had
once suffered her girlish fancy to rest for a little while upon one of
her own class. And fortunately she had not gone further in her story,
but at that point had left it to rest; making no mention of how that
long-forgotten lover had so lately reappeared and confronted her.

Still there remained in her heart the irrepressible instinct that it
would have been better if she had not spoken. And now, as she silently
pondered upon her imprudence, it seemed as though her anxiety had
suddenly endowed her brain with new and keener faculties of perception,
so many startling ideas began to crowd in upon her. More particularly,
full shape and tone seemed for the first time given to one terrible
suspicion, which she had hitherto known only in a misty, intangible, and
seldom recurring form--the suspicion that, if the passive girl before
her were really an enemy, it was not owing to any mere ordinary impulse
of fear, or envy, or inexplicable womanish dislike, but rather to secret
rivalry.

That, within the past few days, Sergius had more and more exhibited
toward her an indifference, which even his studied attempts to conduct
himself with an appearance of his former interest and affection did not
fully hide, AEnone could not but feel. That within her breast lurked the
terrible thought that perhaps the time had forever passed for her to
come to him as to a loving friend, and there fearlessly po