t tell you what I suffered. Next day I went down to the village. Her
mother was nearly crazed, the whole village was gossiping the shameful
story. He--or some one like him, had been seen haunting the outskirts of
the village, she had stolen, evening after evening, to some secret
tryst.

"She had left a note--'she couldn't marry old Liston,' she said; 'she
had gone away with somebody she liked ten thousand times better. They
needn't look for her. If he made her a lady she would come back of
herself, if not--but it was no use their looking for her. Tell Mr.
Liston she was sorry, and she hoped mother wouldn't make a fuss, and she
was her affectionate daughter, Lucy.'

"I sat and read the curiously heartless words, and I knew just as well
as if she had said so, that it was with young Laurence she had gone. I
knew, too, for the first time, how altogether heartless, base, and
worthless was this girl. But there was nothing to be said or done. I
went back to New York, to my old life, in a stupid, plodding sort of
way. I said nothing to Mr. Darcy. I sold off the pretty furniture. I
waited for young Mr. Laurence to return; he did return at
Christmas--handsome, high-spirited, and dashing as ever. But he rather
shrank from me, and I saw it. I went up to him on the night of his
arrival, and calmly asked him the question:

"'Mr. Laurence, what have you done with Lucy West?

"He turned red to his temples, he wasn't too old or too hardened to
blush then, but he denied everything. Lying,--cold, barefaced lying, is
one of Mr. Thorndyke's principal accomplishments.

"'He knew nothing of Lucy West--how dared I insinuate such a thing.'
Straightening himself up haughtily. 'If she had run away from me, with
some younger, better looking fellow, it was only what I might have
expected. But fools of forty will never be wise;' and then, with a
sneering laugh, and his hands in his pockets, my young pasha strolls
away, and we spoke of Lucy West no more.

"That was five years ago. One winter night, a year after, walking up
Grand street about ten o'clock, three young women came laughing and
talking loudly towards me. It needed no second look at their painted
faces, their tawdry silks, and gaudy 'jewelry,' to tell what they were.
But one face--ah! I had seen it last fresh and innocent, down among the
peaceful fields. Our eyes met; the loud laugh, the loud words, seemed to
freeze on her lips--she grew white under all the paint she wore. She
turne