es," said I, with a great effort at collectedness. "I have much to ask
your forgiveness for. It is fully a year since I was charged to place
that in your hands, but one mischance after another has befallen me; not
to own that in my own purposeless mode of life I have had no enemy worse
than my fate."

"I have heard something of your fondness for adventure," said she, with
a strange smile that blended a sort of pity with a gentle irony. "After
we parted company at Schaffhausen, I believe you travelled for some time
on foot? We heard, at least, that you took a fancy to explore a mode
of life few persons have penetrated, or, at least, few of your rank and
condition."

"May I ask, what do you believe that rank and condition to be, Miss
Herbert?" asked I, firmly.

She blushed deeply at this; perhaps I was too abrupt in the way I spoke,
and I hastened to add,--

"When I offered to be the bearer of the letter you have just read, I was
moved by another wish than merely to render you some service. I wanted
to tell you, once for all, that if I lived for a while in a fiction
land of my own invention, with day-dreams and fancies, and hopes and
ambitions all unreal, I have come to pay the due penalty of my deceit,
and confess that nothing can be more humble than I am in birth, station,
or fortune,--my father an apothecary, my name Potts, my means a very few
pounds in the world; and yet, with all that avowal, I feel prouder now
that I have made it, than ever I did in the false assumption of some
condition I had no claim to."

She held out her hand to me with such a significant air of approval, and
smiled so good-naturedly, that I could not help pressing it to my lips,
and kissing it rapturously.

Taking a seat at my side, and with a voice meant to recall me to a quiet
and business-like demeanor, she asked me to read over Miss Crofton's
letter. I told her that I knew every line of it by heart, and, more
still, I knew the whole story to which it related. It was a topic that
required the nicest delicacy to touch on, but with a frankness that
charmed me, she said,--

"You have had the candor to tell me freely your story; let me imitate
you, and reveal mine.

"You know who we are, and whence we have sprung; that my father was
a simple laborer on a line of railroad, and by dint of zeal and
intelligence, and an energy that would not be balked or impeded, that
he raised himself to station and affluence. You have heard of his
conne