kind of avenging spirit--that would forever
haunt her.

While she was in this state of ungovernable emotion, Mittie came in,
with a face as white and rigid as marble, and stood directly in front of
her.

"Why have you fled from Clinton so?" she cried, in a strange, harsh
tone. "Tell me, for I will know. Tell me, for I have a right to know."

Helen tried to speak, but her breathless lips sought in vain to utter a
sound. There was a bright, red spot in the centre of both cheeks, but
the rest of her face was as colorless as Mittie's.

"Speak," cried Mittie, stamping her foot, with an imperious gesture,
"and tell me the truth, or you had better never have been born."

"Ask me nothing," she said at length, recovering breath to answer, "for
the truth will only make you wretched."

"What has he said to you?" repeated Mittie, seizing the arm of Helen
with a force of which she was not aware. "Have you dared to let him talk
to you about love?"

"Alas! I want not his love. I believe him not," cried Helen; "and, oh!
Mittie, trust him not. Think of him no more. He does not love you--is
not worthy of you."

Mittie tossed Helen's arm from her with a violence that made her writhe
with pain--while her eyes flashed with the bale-fires of passion.

"How dare you tell me such a falsehood?" she exclaimed, "you little,
artful, consummate hypocrite. He never told you this. You have been
trying to supplant me from the moment of your arrival, trying to make
yourself appear a victim, a saint--a martyr to a sister's jealous and
exciting temper. I have seen it all. I have watched the whole, day after
day. I have seen you stealing off to Miss Thusa's--pretending to love
that horrible old woman--only that you might have clandestine meetings
with Clinton. And now you are seeking to shake my confidence in his
faith and truth, that you may alienate him more completely from me."

"Oh! Mittie--don't," cried Helen, "don't for Heaven's sake, talk so
dreadfully. You don't mean what you say. You don't know what you are
doing."

"I tell you I do know--and you shall know to your cost, you little wolf
in lamb's clothing," cried Mittie, growing more and more frantic as she
yielded to the violence of her passions. "It was not enough, was it, to
wind yourself round the young doctor with your subtle, childish ways,
till you have made a fool of him with all his wisdom, treating him with
a forwardness and familiarity that ought to make you blush at the