t. She had been mean enough, base enough,
vile enough, to sell herself to that wretched lord. Mean, base, and vile
she had been, and she now confessed it; but she was not false enough to
pretend that she mourned the man as a wife mourns. Harry might have seen
enough to know, have understood enough to perceive, that he need not
regard her widowhood.

And as to her money! if that were the stumbling-block, might it not be
well that the first overture should come from her? Could she not find
words to tell him that it might all be his? Could she not say to him,
"Harry Clavering, all this is nothing in my hands. Take it into your
hands, and it will prosper." Then, it was that she went to her desk, and
attempted to write to him. She did write to him a completed note,
offering herself and all that was hers for his acceptance. In doing so,
she strove hard to be honest and yet not over bold; to be affectionate
and yet not unfeminine. Long she sat, holding her head with one hand,
while the other attempted to use the pen which would not move over the
paper. At length, quickly it flew across the sheet, and a few lines were
there for her to peruse.

"Harry Clavering," she had written, "I know I am doing what men and
women say no woman should do. You may, perhaps, say so of me now; but if
you do, I know you so well, that I do not fear that others will be able
to repeat it. Harry, I have never loved any one but you. Will you be my
husband? You well know that I should not make you this offer if I did
not intend that everything I have should be yours. It will be pleasant
to me to feel that I can make some reparation for the evil I have done.
As for love, I have never loved any one but you. You yourself must know
that well. Yours, altogether, if you will have it so--JULIA."

She took the letter with her back across the room to her seat by the
fire, and took with her at the same time the little portrait; and there
she sat, looking at the one and reading the other. At last she slowly
folded the note up into a thin wisp of paper, and, lighting the end of
it, watched it till every shred of it was burnt to an ash. "If he wants
me," she said, "he can come and take me--as other men do." It was a
fearful attempt, that which she had thought of making. How could she
have looked him in the face again had his answer to her been a refusal?

Another hour went by before she took herself to her bed, during which
her cruelly used maiden was waiting for