not--but if I tell you how often you
refused to perform in secret the office which was required of you--how
much you urged that it was against your canonical rules--if I name the
argument to which you yielded--and remind you of your purpose, to
acknowledge your transgression to your brethren in the church courts, to
plead your excuse, and submit to their censure, which you said could not
be a light one--you will be then aware, that, in the voice of the
miserable pauper, you hear the words of the once artful, gay, and
specious Hannah Irwin."

"I allow it--I allow it!" said Mr. Cargill; "I admit the tokens, and
believe you to be indeed her whose name you assume."

"Then one painful step is over," said she; "for I would ere now have
lightened my conscience by confession, saving for the cursed pride of
spirit, which was ashamed of poverty, though it had not shrunk from
guilt.--Well--In these arguments, which were urged to you by a youth
best known to you by the name of Francis Tyrrel, though more properly
entitled to that of Valentine Bulmer, we practised on you a base and
gross deception.--Did you not hear some one sigh?--I hope there is no
one in the room--I trust I shall die when my confession is signed and
sealed, without my name being dragged through the public--I hope ye
bring not in your menials to gaze on my abject misery--I cannot brook
that."

She paused and listened; for the ear, usually deafened by pain, is
sometimes, on the contrary, rendered morbidly acute. Mr. Cargill assured
her, there was no one present but himself. "But, O, most unhappy woman!"
he said, "what does your introduction prepare me to expect!"

"Your expectation, be it ever so ominous, shall be fully satisfied.--I
was the guilty confidant of the false Francis Tyrrel.--Clara loved the
true one.--When the fatal ceremony passed, the bride and the clergyman
were deceived alike--and I was the wretch--the fiend--who, aiding
another yet blacker, if blacker could be--mainly helped to accomplish
this cureless misery!"

"Wretch!" exclaimed the clergyman, "and had you not then done
enough?--Why did you expose the betrothed of one brother to become the
wife of another?"

"I acted," said the sick woman, "only as Bulmer instructed me; but I had
to do with a master of the game. He contrived, by his agent Solmes, to
match me with a husband imposed on me by his devices as a man of
fortune!--a wretch, who maltreated me--plundered me--sold me.--Oh! if
fie