T DROPPING FROM BEFORE RALPH'S MYSTERIOUS PARENTAGE--
STRANGE DISCLOSURES, AND MUCH GOOD EVIDENCE THAT THIS IS A VERY BAD
WORLD--RALPH'S LOVE-SYMPTOMS ARE FAST SUBSIDING.

"Ralph," said the lady, when we were again alone, "I have, through the
whole of my life, always detested scenes, and, to the utmost of my
power, ever repelled all violent emotions. I am not now going to give
you a history of my life--to make my confessions, and ask pardon of you
and God, and then die--nonsense; but I must say that your fate has been
somewhat strangely connected with my own. I acknowledge to you, at
once, that I am a fallen woman--but, as I never had the beauty, so I
never had the repentance, of a Magdalen. I fell to one of the greatest
upon the earth. I still think that it was a glorious fate. I know that
you are going to wound me deeply. I will take it meekly; may it be, in
some measure, looked upon as a small expiation for my one great error!
But, spare me, as long as you are able, the name of this person you have
described with such bitterness--it may not, after all, be he who has
been almost the only bitterness that has yet poisoned my cup of a too
pleasurable existence--'tis pleasurable, alas! until, even in this, my
eleventh hour. Tell me all, and then I shall be able to judge how much
it may be my duty to reveal to you."

It was a fine study, that of observing the gradual emotion of this
worldly and magnificent woman, as I proceeded with my eventful tale. I
took it up only at that period when Joshua Daunton first made his
application to me to be allowed to enter the _Eos_. The beginning of my
narrative fell coldly upon her, and her features were strung up to that
tension which I had often before observed in persons who were bracing up
their nerves to undergo a dangerous surgical operation. They were
certainly not impassive, for, in the fixed eyes that glared upon me,
there was a strange restlessness, though not of motion.

The first symptoms of emotion that I could perceive took place when I
described the lash descending upon the shrinking shoulders of Daunton.
She clasped her hands firmly together, and upturned her eyes, as if
imploring Heaven for mercy, or entreating it for vengeance. I
perceived, as I proceeded, that I was gradually losing ground in her
affections--that she was, in spite of herself, espousing the cause of my
pledged enemy; and when I told her of the defiance that I had received
in the sick-bay,