was trying to
break your heart and the heart of the man who truly loved you, that he
might win you and your wealth!"

"How do you know this?--woman, how do you know this?" broke out the poor
girl, her agony of doubt and suffering terrible to behold.

"I know it as if God had revealed it to me from heaven!" said Josephine
Harris, casting up her eyes and lifting her hand momentarily, as if
invoking that heaven for the truth she was uttering. "Not one word of
these stories of Richard Crawford was true. He was pure and good. He is
so, in spite of wrong and neglect. He loves you still, though he is
almost broken-hearted."

"Oh, you cannot prove these things to me!" again spoke Mary Crawford,
the trouble in her eyes still deeper than before, and still that trouble
now strangely compounded of joy and fear.

"I can and I will!" said the strange mentor. "Your own heart is proving
them to you at this moment. You see how blind you have been, but you do
not yet know all."

"All? what more can there be, whether I am to believe you or not?" asked
the young girl.

"More--much more!" said Josephine Harris, speaking now almost in a
whisper. "Do not shriek or run away from me; but I tell you, before God,
Mary Crawford, that for weeks past--perhaps for months, Egbert Crawford
has been attempting to murder the relative he wished to rival, by
_poison_."

"Poison? oh no, oh my God!" cried the young girl, now no longer to be
restrained, and starting from her chair in uncontrollable agitation.
"You are mad--mad--and you are trying to make _me_ so!"

"I have seen him apply the poison," said the strange compound of womanly
weakness and more than manly strength "seen him apply it, under the
pretence of healing. I have seen the racking pains those fiendish
practices have produced, and that no doctor's skill could combat. I have
saved him--yes, I believe that I have saved him! You do not yet quite
believe all the wickedness of this man! I see by your eyes that you do
not! But you shall! See here!" and with the word she drew from the
pocket of her dress the very bandage which she had exhibited in the
office of Doctor LaTurque, and unrolled its dark loathsomeness--"here is
the very poison that I saw him apply to Richard Crawford's heart,
warning him not to let the doctors suspect it, because they would laugh
at him for _superstition_. I have stolen this--yes, _stolen it_, from
the spot where Richard Crawford had hidden it when he first beg