y best endeavors to repel the thoughts
suggested.

"I am very morbid and fanciful, certainly," I said to myself, "even to
think such a thing possible. At his age, and knowing full well my
opinion of him, my sentiments toward him--he surely would not dare--!" I
could not even in my own heart finish out a conjecture that dyed my face
and throat crimson, or mahogany-color, as Evelyn would have averred
contemptuously could she have witnessed my solitary confusion.

"I have clung to him too much," I thought; "it is my own fault if he
throws too much of the tone of tenderness in his manner, when,
distasteful as he is to me, his arm, his protection, have seemed to me
preferable to those of a stranger, and I have accepted them merely to
avoid the advances of others.

"I am not in the mood to be sentimental, or susceptible either, after my
bitter experience, and the idea he so carefully instills is ever present
to me--strive as I will to repel it--the thought that I am sought
alone for my fortune!

"Yet I am not wholly unattractive, probably, though less beautiful than
Evelyn. But what, after all, is beauty? Plainer women than I are loved
and sought in marriage, who possess no gift of fortune or
accomplishment.

"Why should I suffer him to fill my mind with suspicions that embitter
it against all approaches? Why should I seal my soul away in endless
gloom, because one man, out of all Adam's race, was faithless and
falsehearted?"

Thus reasoning, I gained strength and self-reliance to receive other
attentions and mingle with the multitude. Nor should I have known to
what extent Mr. Bainrothe had carried his injustice and perfidy toward
me, but for the loquacity of Lieutenant Raymond, a young adorer of mine,
who revealed to me, the very evening before I left Saratoga, along with
his passion--a hopeless one of course, which, but for this connection,
would not be noted here--the strategic course of my guardian.

"I ought to have been warned, by what I saw and heard, that my suit was
a hopeless one," he said; "I had been told of your engagement, but could
not believe it possible, although confirmed by Mr. Bainrothe's manner. A
rival of his age and experience, possessed too of such physical
attractions, and such charm of manner, seldom fails to carry the day
over a raw, impulsive youth--who can only adore--bow down and worship
his idol, and who possesses no arts of conquest."

"Pause there, Lieutenant Raymond; of what are yo