I beg your forgiveness with all my heart. But surely,
Captain Fyffe, you do not in cold blood propose to one woman that she
shall throw another on the world, that she should cast her, however
frail she may have been, into new temptations. You must let me tell
you," she hurried on, raising her hand against me to arrest any
interruption I might have been disposed to make--"you must let me tell
you that I exercise some little forbearance in taking this tone at all.
No slander has ever touched my reputation, and I do not intend that it
shall smirch it now. I have but to say I have been deceived to establish
myself in the sight of all who know me. Tell me, sir, if you have ever
heard a whisper against my honor. Did ever man or woman breathe a word
in your hearing with respect to me which might not have been spoken of a
sister of your own?"

The plain truth was that I knew nobody but Bru-now who had any
acquaintance with the little lady's antecedents. He had certainly spoken
of her often in terms which I should have been very sorry to have heard
applied to a sister of mine if I had been so fortunate as to own one.
But, then, Brunow was a man about town, and a braggart at the same
time, and I had attached no more importance to his talk than to the
irresponsible babble of a baby. It was not my business to repeat
Brunow's stupid follies, and I kept silent. She, however, was not
disposed to let me off that way, but pressed me for an answer.

"Madame," I was forced to say, "I am not so impertinent as to call your
reputation into question for an instant. I will not be so insolent as
to sit in judgment upon so delicate a question for a moment. I have said
all I had to say, and can see no reason for recalling any part of it." I
bowed, and made a movement to retire, but she flashed between me and the
door, and faced me with supplicating hands.

"Think again, Captain Fyffe," she besought me; "think again. Poor
Constance is not the heartless wretch you fancy her. She is alone in
the world; she is friendless, penniless. There is nobody to lend her a
helping hand, nobody to believe in her wish to lead a better life but
only poor little me. And of what avail is my belief in her, of what
avail is my wish to lift her from the mire if you should go from me and
trumpet her past abroad. I knew her, Captain Fyffe, when she was richer
and happier than she is now, when she was received by society in St.
Petersburg, when she was courted, admired