sure, tho' he's so simple
like, he's some great gentleman! They say his hoss is worth a hundred
pounds! Dear, dear! why didn't I ever think of this before? He must be a
very wicked man. I see, now, why he comes here. I'll speak to him, that,
I will!--a very wicked man!"

Sarah was startled from her indignation by Fanny's rising suddenly,
and standing before her in the flickering twilight, almost like a shape
transformed,--so tall did she seem, so stately, so dignified.

"Is it of him that you are speaking?" said she, in a voice of calm but
deep resentment--"of him! If so, Sarah, we two can live no more in the
same house."

And these words were said with a propriety and collectedness that even,
through all her terrors, showed at once to Sarah how much they now
wronged Fanny who had suffered their lips to repeat the parrot-cry of
the "idiot girl!"

"O! gracious me!--miss--ma'am--I am so sorry--I'd rather bite out my
tongue than say a word to offend you; it was only my love for you, dear
innocent creature that you are!" and the honest woman sobbed with real
passion as she clasped Fanny's hand. "There have been so many young
persons, good and harmless, yes, even as you are, ruined. But you don't
understand me. Miss Fanny! hear me; I must try and say what I would say.
That man, that gentleman--so proud, so well-dressed, so grand-like, will
never marry you, never--never. And if ever he says he does love you, and
you say you love him, and you two don't marry, you will be ruined and
wicked, and die--die of a broken heart!"

The earnestness of Sarah's manner subdued and almost awed Fanny. She
sank down again in her chair, and suffered the old woman to caress and
weep over her hand for some moments in a silence that concealed the
darkest and most agitated feelings Fanny's life had hitherto known. At
length she said:--

"Why may he not marry me if he loves me?--he is not my brother,--indeed
he is not! I'll never call him so again."

"He cannot marry you," said Sarah, resolved, with a sort of rude
nobleness, to persevere in what she felt to be a duty; "I don't say
anything about money, because that does not always signify. But he
cannot marry you, because--because people who are hedicated one way
never marry those who are hedicated and brought up in another. A
gentleman of that kind requires a wife to know--oh--to know ever so
much; and you--"

"Sarah," interrupted Fanny, rising again, but this time with a smile
on her