nful to touch on. Let the unhappy events
of the last few weeks lie, if not forgotten, at least unmentioned, till
you are calm and quiet enough to talk of them as old memories."

"Yes! but how can I bear the thought of what others may say of
me--meanwhile?"

"Who are these others--we see no one, we go into no society?"

"Have you not scores of dear friends, writing by every post to ask
if this atrocious duellist be 'your' Mr. Calvert, and giving such a
narrative, besides, of his doings, that a galley-slave would shrink from
contact with such a man? Do I not know well how tenderly people deal
with the vices that are not their own? How severe the miser can be on
the spendthrift, and how mercilessly the coward condemns the hot blood
that resents an injury, and how gladly they would involve in shame the
character that would not brook dishonour?"

"Believe me, we have very few 'dear friends' at all," said Florence,
smiling, "and not one, no, not a single one of the stamp you speak of."

"If you were only to read our humdrum letters," chimed in Emily, "you'd
see how they never treat of anything but little domestic details of
people who live as obscurely as ourselves. How Uncle Tom's boy has got
into the Charterhouse; or Mary's baby taken the chicken-pox."

"But Loyd writes to you--and not in this strain?"

"I suspect Joseph cares little to fill his pages with what is called
news," said Emily, with a laughing glance at her sister, who had turned
away her head in some confusion.

"Nor would he be one likely to judge you harshly," said Florence,
recovering herself. "I believe you have few friends who rate you more
highly than he does."

"It is very generous of him!" said Calvert, haughtily; and then,
catching in the proud glance of Florry's eyes a daring challenge of his
words, he added, in a quieter tone, "I mean, it is generous of him
to overlook how unjust I have been to him. It is not easy for men
so different to measure each other, and I certainly formed an unfair
estimate of him."

"Oh! may I tell him that you said so?" cried she, taking his hand with
warmth.

"I mean to do it for myself dearest sister. It is a debt I cannot permit
another to acquit for me."

"Don't you think you are forgetting our guest's late fatigues, and what
need he has of rest and quietness, girls?" said Miss Grainger, coming
over to where they sat.

"I was forgetting everything in my joy, aunt," cried Florence. "He is
going to write