"I dare say you are. You don't love your
husband. You would not be here if you did. Tell me, Rebecca, did I
ever do you anything but kindness?"

"Indeed, Amelia, no," the other said, still hanging down her head.

"When you were quite poor, who was it that befriended you? Was I not a
sister to you? You saw us all in happier days before he married me. I
was all in all then to him; or would he have given up his fortune, his
family, as he nobly did to make me happy? Why did you come between my
love and me? Who sent you to separate those whom God joined, and take
my darling's heart from me--my own husband? Do you think you could I
love him as I did? His love was everything to me. You knew it, and
wanted to rob me of it. For shame, Rebecca; bad and wicked
woman--false friend and false wife."

"Amelia, I protest before God, I have done my husband no wrong,"
Rebecca said, turning from her.

"Have you done me no wrong, Rebecca? You did not succeed, but you
tried. Ask your heart if you did not."

She knows nothing, Rebecca thought.

"He came back to me. I knew he would. I knew that no falsehood, no
flattery, could keep him from me long. I knew he would come. I prayed
so that he should."

The poor girl spoke these words with a spirit and volubility which
Rebecca had never before seen in her, and before which the latter was
quite dumb. "But what have I done to you," she continued in a more
pitiful tone, "that you should try and take him from me? I had him but
for six weeks. You might have spared me those, Rebecca. And yet, from
the very first day of our wedding, you came and blighted it. Now he is
gone, are you come to see how unhappy I am?" she continued. "You made
me wretched enough for the past fortnight: you might have spared me
to-day."

"I--I never came here," interposed Rebecca, with unlucky truth.

"No. You didn't come. You took him away. Are you come to fetch him
from me?" she continued in a wilder tone. "He was here, but he is gone
now. There on that very sofa he sate. Don't touch it. We sate and
talked there. I was on his knee, and my arms were round his neck, and
we said 'Our Father.' Yes, he was here: and they came and took him
away, but he promised me to come back."

"He will come back, my dear," said Rebecca, touched in spite of herself.

"Look," said Amelia, "this is his sash--isn't it a pretty colour?" and
she took up the fringe and kissed it. She had tied it round her wai