raft has placed a spy upon all my motions."

"How is that?" inquired Reilly. "Are you not under the protection
of your father, who, when occasion is necessary, has both pride and
spirit?"

"But my poor credulous father is, notwithstanding, easily imposed on. I
know not exactly the particulars," replied the lovely girl, "but I can
easily suspect them. My father it was, certainly, who discharged my last
maid, Ellen Connor, because, he said, he did not like her, and because,
he added, he would put a better and a more trustworthy one in her place.
I cannot move that she is not either with me or after me; nay, I cannot
write a note that she does not immediately acquaint papa, who is certain
to stroll into my apartment and ask to see the contents of it, adding,
'Helen, when a young lady of rank and property forms a clandestine
and disgraceful attachment it is time that her father should be on the
lookout; so I will just take the liberty of throwing my eye over this
little billet-doux.' I told him often that he was at liberty to inspect
every line I should write, but that I thought that very few parents
would express such want of confidence in their daughters, if, like me,
the latter had deserved such confidence at their hands as I did at his."

"What is the name of your present maid?" asked Reilly, musing.

"Oh," replied Miss Folliard, "I have three maids altogether, but she has
been installed as own maid. Her name is Eliza Herbert."

"A native of England, is she not? Eliza Herbert!" he exclaimed; "in the
lowermost depths of perdition there is not such a villain. This Eliza
Herbert is neither more nor less than one of his--but I will not pain
your pure and delicate mind by mentioning at further length what she is
and was to him. The clergyman of the parish, Mr. Brown, knows the whole
circumstances. See him at church, and get him to communicate them to
your father. The fact is, this villain, who is at once cunning and
parsimonious, had a double motive, each equally base and diabolical, in
sending her here. In the first place, he wished, by getting her a
good place, to make your father the unconscious means of rewarding her
profligacy; and in the second of keeping her as a spy upon you."

A blush, resulting from her natural sense of delicacy, as well as from
the deepest indignation at a man who did not scruple to place the woman
whom he looked upon as almost immediately to become his wife, in the
society of such a wretch--