telling you something first about myself. I am like
many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances.
It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among
strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to
misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr.
Midwinter, in your estimation?"

"God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man living," he
went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has better reason to
understand and respect your silence than I have."

Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew it, the
first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you,
too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I
believe in mesmerism--do you?" She suddenly recollected herself, and
shuddered. "Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?" she
exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and,
forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over
it and kissed it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning
touch of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your
mercy!"

He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was
trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden
from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. "How
that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether there was a time when
I might have loved _him_?"

The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt
her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended
him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her
again.

"Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and forgive
on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression
of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal
respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down
meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little
flattering sigh. "I was telling you," she went on, "of my reluctance
to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I
afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and
Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to
the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first
instance, I have no doubt. I am sor