ss and ruin
came on me--came on me.

Raising her eyes swiftly from their moody gaze upon the fire, to
Harriet's face, she said:

'I am wasting time, and there is none to spare; yet if I hadn't thought
of all, I shouldn't be here now. Wretchedness and ruin came on me, I
say. I was made a short-lived toy, and flung aside more cruelly and
carelessly than even such things are. By whose hand do you think?'

'Why do you ask me?' said Harriet.

'Why do you tremble?' rejoined Alice, with an eager look. 'His usage
made a Devil of me. I sunk in wretchedness and ruin, lower and
lower yet. I was concerned in a robbery--in every part of it but the
gains--and was found out, and sent to be tried, without a friend,
without a penny. Though I was but a girl, I would have gone to Death,
sooner than ask him for a word, if a word of his could have saved me.
I would! To any death that could have been invented. But my mother,
covetous always, sent to him in my name, told the true story of my case,
and humbly prayed and petitioned for a small last gift--for not so many
pounds as I have fingers on this hand. Who was it, do you think, who
snapped his fingers at me in my misery, lying, as he believed, at his
feet, and left me without even this poor sign of remembrance; well
satisfied that I should be sent abroad, beyond the reach of farther
trouble to him, and should die, and rot there? Who was this, do you
think?'

'Why do you ask me?' repeated Harriet.

'Why do you tremble?' said Alice, laying her hand upon her arm' and
looking in her face, 'but that the answer is on your lips! It was your
brother James.

Harriet trembled more and more, but did not avert her eyes from the
eager look that rested on them.

'When I knew you were his sister--which was on that night--I came back,
weary and lame, to spurn your gift. I felt that night as if I could have
travelled, weary and lame, over the whole world, to stab him, if I could
have found him in a lonely place with no one near. Do you believe that I
was earnest in all that?'

'I do! Good Heaven, why are you come again?'

'Since then,' said Alice, with the same grasp of her arm, and the same
look in her face, 'I have seen him! I have followed him with my eyes, In
the broad day. If any spark of my resentment slumbered in my bosom, it
sprung into a blaze when my eyes rested on him. You know he has
wronged a proud man, and made him his deadly enemy. What if I had given
information of him to tha