of my own pocket all
expenses of punishing him and breaking him for the rest of his life, if
I go through every court in the country to do it!--S. S."

Hurriedly as I read over this wretched and revolting letter, I detected
immediately how the new plot had been framed to keep me still deceived;
to heap wrong after wrong on me with the same impunity. She was not
aware that I had followed her into the house, and had heard all from
her voice and Mannion's--she believed that I was still ignorant of
everything, until we met at the door-step; and in this conviction she
had forged the miserable lie which her father's hand had written down.
Did he really believe it, or was he writing as her accomplice? It was
not worth while to inquire: the worst and darkest discovery which it
concerned me to make, had already proclaimed itself--she was a liar and
a hypocrite to the very last!

And it was this woman's lightest glance which had once been to me as
the star that my life looked to!---it was for this woman that I had
practised a deceit on my family which it now revolted me to think
of; had braved whatever my father's anger might inflict; had risked
cheerfully the loss of all that birth and fortune could bestow! Why had
I ever risen from my weary bed of sickness?--it would have been better,
far better, that I had died!

But, while life remained, life had its trials and its toils, from which
it was useless to shrink. There was still another letter to be opened:
there was yet more wickedness which I must know how to confront.

The second of Mr. Sherwin's letters was much shorter than the first, and
had apparently been written not more than a day or two back. His tone
was changed; he truckled to me no longer--he began to threaten. I
was reminded that the servant's report pronounced me to have been
convalescent for several days past: and was asked why, under these
circumstances, I had never even written. I was warned that my silence
had been construed greatly to my disadvantage; and that if it continued
longer, the writer would assert his daughter's cause loudly and
publicly, not to my father only, but to all the world. The letter
ended by according to me three days more of grace, before the fullest
disclosure would be made.

For a moment, my indignation got the better of me. I rose, to go that
instant to North Villa and unmask the wretches who still thought to
make their market of me as easily as ever. But the mere momentary de