to her room, looking her adversary full in the face as she
retreated and closed the door upon him.

Pen was bewildered with wonder, perplexity, fury, at this monstrous and
unreasonable persecution. He burst out into a loud and bitter laugh as
Laura quitted him, and with sneers and revilings, as a man who jeers
under an operation, ridiculed at once his own pain and his persecutor's
anger. The laugh, which was one of bitter humour, and no unmanly or
unkindly expression of suffering under most cruel and unmerited torture,
was heard in the next apartment, as some of his unlucky previous
expressions had been, and, like them, entirely misinterpreted by the
hearers. It struck like a dagger into the wounded and tender heart of
Helen; it pierced Laura, and inflamed the high-spirited girl with scorn
and anger. "And it was to this hardened libertine," she thought--"to
this boaster of low intrigues, that I had given my heart away." "He
breaks the most sacred laws," thought Helen. "He prefers the creature of
his passion to his own mother; and when he is upbraided, he laughs, and
glories in his crime. 'She gave me her all,' I heard him say it,"
argued the poor widow, "and he boasts of it, and laughs, and breaks his
mother's heart." The emotion, the shame, the grief, the mortification
almost killed her. She felt she should die of his unkindness.

Warrington thought of Laura's speech--"Perhaps that is what you wished."
"She loves Pen still," he said. "It was jealousy made her speak."--"Come
away, Pen. Come away, and let us go to church and get calm. You must
explain this matter to your mother. She does not appear to know the
truth: nor do you quite, my good fellow. Come away, and let us talk
about it." And again he muttered to himself, "'Perhaps that is what you
wished.' Yes, she loves him. Why shouldn't she love him? Whom else would
I have her love? What can she be to me but the dearest and the fairest
and the best of women?"

So, leaving the women similarly engaged within, the two gentlemen walked
away, each occupied with his own thought, and silent for a considerable
space. "I must set this matter right," thought honest George "as she
loves him still--I must set his mind right about the other woman." And
with this charitable thought, the good fellow began to tell more at
large what Bows had said to him regarding Miss Bolton's behaviour and
fickleness, and he described how the girl was no better than a little
light-minded flirt; a