ngs you have been
saying! I cannot believe that so handsome a young gentleman can mean
anything wrong--I only wish you could have seen him with her, he is so
devoted--it is quite beautiful."

"Alas--the tempter always makes himself beautiful in the eyes of the
tempted! Sophia, we can yet save this unhappy child, but who knows how
soon it may be too late!--You can still repair some of the wrong you
have done, but you can only do so by the most absolute obedience to
me.... Believe me, I know the truth about this vile adventurer, this
Captain Jack Smith."

"Good Heavens!" cried Sophia, "Rupert, do not tell me, lest I swoon
away, that he is married already?"

"The man, my dear, whose plots to compromise and entangle a lovely
girl you have favoured, is a villain of the deepest dye--a pirate."

"Oh!" shivered Sophia with fascinated misery--thrilling recollections
of last night's reading shooting through her frame.

"A smuggler, a criminal, an outlaw in point of fact," pursued Mr.
Landale. "He merely seeks Madeleine for her money--has a wife in every
port, no doubt--"

Miss Landale did not swoon; but her brother's watchful eye was
satisfied with the effect produced, and he went on in a well modulated
tone of suppressed emotion:

"And after breaking her heart, ruining her body and soul, dragging her
to the foulest depths he would have cast her away like a dead
weed--perhaps murdered her! Sophia, what would your feelings be then?"

A hard red spot had risen to each of Miss Landale's cheek bones; her
tears had dried up under the fevered glow.

"We believed," she said trembling in every limb, "that he was working
on a mission to the French court--"

"Faugh--" cried Mr. Landale, contemptuously, "smuggling French brandy
for our English drunkards and traitorous intelligence for our French
enemies!"

"Such a handsome young man, so gentlemanly, such an air!" maundered
the miserable woman between her chattering teeth. "It was quite
accidental that we met, Rupert, quite accidental, I assure you.
Madeleine--poor dear girl--came down with me here, I wanted to show
her the g-grave----" here Sophia gurgled convulsively, remembering her
brother's cruel reproaches.

"Well?"

"She came here with me, and as I was kneeling down, planting crocuses
just here, Rupert, and she was standing _there_, a young man suddenly
leaped over the wall, and fell at her feet. He had not seen
_me_--Alas, it reminded me of my own happiness! And he