d. Well, do
I look like that? Can you read in my face my mother's shame?'

"She was half beside herself, I saw. It was an awful thing to hear her,
a young girl, talk thus to me, ay, and without one natural blush. I
said to her, gently, 'that I knew the unhappy truth; but, as regarded
herself, it could make no difference of feeling in any right-judging
mind, nor would with those who had loved her, and who now anxiously
wished to hear from me of her welfare.'

"'You mean your mother, who hates me as I hate her; and Olive Rothesay,
whom I tried to murder!' (Friend, you did not tell me that.)

"I drew back the hand I had offered. Forgive me, Olive!--let me this
once call you so!--forgive me that I felt a momentary abhorrence for the
miserable creature who might have taken your precious life away. Yet you
would not tell the fact--even to me! Remembering this, I turned again to
your sister, who cannot be altogether evil since she is dear to you. I
said, and solemnly I know, for I was greatly moved,

"'Christal, from your own lips have I first heard of this. Your sister's
were sealed, as they would have been on that other secret. Are you not
softened by all this goodness?'

"'No! She thinks to crush me down with it, does she? But she shall not
do so. If I grow wicked, ay, worse than you ever dream of, I shall be
glad. It will punish her for the wrong her father did, and so I shall be
revenged upon his child. Remember, it is all because of him! As to his
daughter, I could have loved her once, until she came between me and
'----

"'I know all that,' said I, heedlessly enough; but I was not thinking of
Christal just then. She rose up in a fury, and demanded what _right_ I
had to know? I answered her as, after a struggle with myself, I thought
best--_how_, I will tell you one day; but I must hasten on now. She
was calmed a little, I saw; but her passion rose again when I mentioned
Lyle.

"'Speak of that no more,' she cried. 'It is all passed and gone. There
is no feeling in my heart but hatred and burning shame. Oh that I had
never been born!'

"I pitied her from my soul, as she crouched down, not weeping, but
groaning out her misery. Strange that she should have let me see it; but
she was so humbled now; and perceiving that I trusted her, perhaps she
was the more won to trust me--I had considered this when I spoke to her
as I did. My dear friend Olive, I myself am learning what I fain would
teach this poor girl--that th