sity, and entitled at some future day to justify my appeal to
it,--if, I say, you be ready and willing for this, say so, and relieve
my intense anxiety; or if--"

"Madam!" broke he in, warmly, "do not agitate yourself any more. I
pledge myself to be your friend."

With a bound she started from her seat, and, seizing his hand, pressed
it to her lips, and then, as though overcome by the boldness of the
action, she covered her face and sobbed bitterly. If Stocmar muttered
some unmeaning commonplaces of comfort and consolation, he was in
reality far more engrossed by contemplating a foot and ankle of
matchless beauty, and which, in a moment so unguarded, had become
accidentally exposed to view.

"I am, then, to regard you as my friend?" said she, trying to smile
through her tears, while she bent on him a look of softest meaning. She
did not, however, prolong a situation so critical, but at once, and
with an impetuosity that bespoke her intense anxiety, burst out into
the story of her actual calamities. Never was there a narrative
more difficult to follow; broken at one moment by bursts of sorrow,
heart-rending regrets, or scarce less poignant expressions of a
resignation that savored of despair. There had been something
very dreadful, and somebody had been terribly cruel, and the
world--cold-hearted and unkind as it is--had been even unkinder than
usual. And then she was too proud to stoop to this or accept that "You
surely would not have wished me to?" cried she, looking into his
eyes very meltingly. And then there was a loss of fortune somehow and
somewhere; a story within a story, like a Chinese puzzle. And there
was more cruelty from the world, and more courage on her part; and then
there were years of such suffering,--years that had so changed her. "Ah!
Mr. Stocmar, you would n't know me if you had seen me in those days!"
Then there came another bewitching glance from beneath her long
eyelashes, as with a half-sigh she said, "You now know it all, and why
my poor Clara must adopt the stage, for I have concealed nothing from
you,--nothing!"

"I am to conclude, then, madam," said he, "that the young lady herself
has chosen this career?"

"Nothing of the kind, my dear Mr. Stocmar. I don't think she ever read
a play in her life; she has certainly never seen one. Of the stage, and
its ambitions and triumphs, she has not the very vaguest notion, nor do
I believe, if she had, would anything in the world induce her to ado