, or else you
will find few friends willing to incur your anger in the hope of
doing you service. I never believed a word of this story.
Marriage--adventure--even the young lady's identity, I deemed all
fictions together."

Cashel muttered something he meant to be apologetic for his rudeness,
and Linton was not slow in accepting even so unwilling a reparation.

"Of course I think no more of it," cried he, with affected cordiality.
"I was going to tell you how Lady Kilgoff received the tidings--exactly
the very opposite to what her kind correspondent had intended. It
actually seemed to encourage her in her passion, as though there was a
similarity in your cases. Besides, she felt, perhaps, that she was not
damaging your future career, as it might be asserted she had done, were
you unmarried. These are mere guesses on my part. I own to you, I have
little skill in reading the Machiavellism of a female heart; the only
key to its mystery I know of is, 'always suspect what is least likely.'"

"And I am to sit down patiently under all this calumny!" said Cashel,
as he walked the room with hasty steps. "I am perhaps to receive at my
table those whose amusement it is so to sport with my character and my
fame!"

"It is a very naughty world, no doubt of it," said Linton, lighting
a fresh cigar; "and the worst of it is, it tempts one always to be as
roguish as one's neighbors for self-preservation."

"You say I am not at liberty to speak of this letter to Lady Kilgoff?"

"Of course not; I am myself a defaulter in having told the matter to
you."

Cashel paced the room hurriedly; and what a whirlwind of opposing
thoughts rushed through his brain! for while at times all Lady Kilgoff
s warnings about Linton, all his own suspicions of his duplicity and
deceit, were uppermost, there was still enough in Linton's narrative,
were it true, to account for Lady Kilgoff's hatred of him. The counsels
_he_ had given, and _she_ rejected, were enough to furnish a feud
forever between them. At which side lay the truth? And then, this letter
about Maritana,--who was the writer? Could it be Linton himself? and if
so, would he have ventured to allude to it?

These thoughts harassed and distressed him at every instant, and in his
present feeling towards Linton he could not ask his aid to solve the
mystery.

Now, he was half disposed to charge him with the whole slander; his
passion prompted him to seek an object for his vengeance, and the ver