al intrusion was followed quickly by others!

He assumed his old ascendancy over me. The past became like an unpleasant
dream in my mind, dimly remembered, but never distinctly recalled.

Occasionally, however, a sharp doubt obtruded itself, and roused me for
an instant. One evening I ventured to ask:

"Richard, why are your visits so brief, and made only in the night?"

"Why?" he repeated, as if startled by the suddenness of the question,
then adding carelessly: "Because you always have that deuced old fellow,
Monsieur Pilot, running here. I am not very jealous, yet it would torment
me to meet one who dares raise his thoughts to my Agnes. He wants to
marry you. Do dismiss him!"

This conjecture proved true, and I was obliged to give a cold rebuff to
the man who had befriended me. It is possible Richard Bristed did not
care to be recognized by his brother's agent, but I did not think of this
at that time.

CHAPTER XI.

After this affair happened Richard visited me more openly, and my pupils,
when by chance they met him, were charmed with the stranger. He was only
known as "Mr. Richard." "Call me that, Agnes, I hate the name of Bristed.
Introduce me to your friends as Mr. Richard," he said, and I had done so.

About this time he explained satisfactorily, to my credulous mind, the
cause of his sudden retreat from Bristed Hall, and gave me reason to
believe that the statements his brother had made concerning him were
untrue and evil in design.

"My brother, as you have surely discovered, Agnes, is a cold, proud man,
and as I was not his equal in wealth or position he selected an heiress,
both old and disagreeable, whom he designed me to marry. Your youth and
beauty he intended to appropriate to himself. I feared if I made him
acquainted with my purpose to unite myself to you he would frustrate all
my wishes, and when I discovered that he knew of my plans, I determined
to forestall him by making you my wife that very night. I intended to
have gone through the form of marriage, which the next day could have
been legalized, for I feared the influence of his wealth and position
upon your unsophisticated mind.

"However, you refused to trust me, and I left your room maddened by anger
and the fear of losing you.

"I met my brother in the hall-way; he said Herbert was ill, and I accused
him of trying to injure the boy that he might defraud me. Sharp words
passed between us. I left him, and in blind haste mount