quitted--all that bespoke that chastest sanctuary of a chaste woman,
which for a stranger to enter is, as it were, to profane--her meaning
broke on him. "Your good name--your hireling! No, madame,--no!" And
as he spoke, he rose to his feet. "Not for me, that sacrifice! Your
humanity shall not cost you so dear. Ho, there! I am the man you seek."
And he strode to the door.

Eugenie was penetrated with the answer. She sprung to him--she grasped
his garments.

"Hush! hush!--for mercy's sake! What would you do? Think you I could
ever be happy again, if the confidence you placed in me were betrayed?
Be calm--be still. I knew not what I said. It will be easy to undeceive
the man--later--when you are saved. And you are innocent,--are you not?"

"Oh, madame," said Morton, "from my soul I say it, I am innocent--not of
poverty--wretchedness--error--shame; I am innocent of crime. May Heaven
bless you!"

And as he reverently kissed the hand laid on his arm, there was
something in his voice so touching, in his manner something so above his
fortunes, that Eugenie was lost in her feelings of compassion, surprise,
and something, it might be, of admiration in her wonder.

"And, oh!" he said, passionately, gazing on her with his dark, brilliant
eyes, liquid with emotion, "you have made my life sweet in saving it.
You--you--of whom, ever since the first time, almost the sole time,
I beheld you--I have so often mused and dreamed. Henceforth, whatever
befall me, there will be some recollections that will--that--"

He stopped short, for his heart was too full for words; and the silence
said more to Eugenie than if all the eloquence of Rousseau had glowed
upon his tongue.

"And who, and what are you?" she asked, after a pause.

"An exile--an orphan--an outcast! I have no name! Farewell!"

"No--stay yet--the danger is not past. Wait till my servant is gone to
rest; I hear him yet. Sit down--sit down. And whither would you go?"

"I know not."

"Have you no friends?"

"Gone."

"No home?"

"None."

"And the police of Paris so vigilant!" cried Eugenie, wringing her
hands. "What is to be done? I shall have saved you in vain--you will be
discovered! Of what do they charge you? Not robbery--not--"

And she, too, stopped short, for she did not dare to breathe the black
word, "Murder!"

"I know not," said Morton, putting his hand to his forehead, "except of
being friends with the only man who befriended me--and they have killed
hi