knew that about not
trustin' anybody till you told me. I hadn't never be'n away from here. I
wasn't brought up like you, and I wasn't so strong as you--you might
think, some time--but not now. I don't ask to have you now--you don't
see. I knew you wouldn't--you can forget--you're so happy--think of that,
sometime, how happy you was, sittin' there--but I never can forget any
more. I say it 'ud be'n better if I'd a died. It's the sin and the shame.
I've nothin' but to bear 'em, now, as long as I live. Oh, you might think
what it was not to have no hope anywheres!"

"What do you mean?" I cried, as it rushed over me in that instant what I
had been too heedless and slow to comprehend, the possible wretched
meaning of her words. "What do you mean?" rising and standing over her,
with a terrible sense of power to convict.

"Oh, Becky, you didn't mean that--worst?"

"Yes," said she, with no visible change on her poor, set face--"yes--I
do."

"I wish you would go out of my room, and leave me!" I exclaimed, then; "I
am not used to such people as you! Do you suppose I would have been with
you all these weeks if I had known? Don't you see how you have wronged
me? I never want to see you again, never! Go! go! and leave me alone!"

I shall never forget the look with which Rebecca rose wearily, and went
to the door--not an angry look, not a look of terror nor even of pleading
reproach; but it was as if her soul, sinful, crushed and bleeding though
it was, in that one moment, rose above my soul and condemned it with
sorrowful, clear eyes.

I listened to her step going down the stairs. I did not call her back. I
heard her latch the outer door of the Ark. No thought of pity for her
wrong, or commiseration for her desolation moved me. I thought only in my
proud selfish passion, how miserably, how bitterly I had been deceived.

I sought out the fisherman's letter before retiring, and the one I had
begun in answer, and tore them both into shreds, believing that I should
as easily rid my mind of the whole miserable affair with which I had been
unwittingly complicated.

CHAPTER XIII.

A MILD WINTER ON THE CAPE.

"It's be'n a mild winter on the Cape;" the Wallencampers congratulated
one another, blinking, with a delicious sense of warmth and comfort, in
the rays of a strong March sun.

The Wallencampers were not, perhaps, generally incited by that love of
stern, unceasing, and vigorous exertion which is, geographically
con