CHAPTER III.
Arabella Crane entered the room; Darrell hesitated—the remembrances attached to her were so painful and repugnant. But did he not now owe to her, perhaps, his very life? He passed his hand rapidly over his brow, as if to sweep away all earlier recollections, and, advancing quickly, extended that hand to her. The stern woman shook her head, and rejected the proffered greeting.
"You owe me no thanks," she said, in her harsh, ungracious accents; "I sought to save not you, but him."
"How!" said Darrell, startled; "you feel no resentment against the man who injured and betrayed you?"
"What my feelings may be toward him are not for you to conjecture; man could not conjecture them; I am woman. What they once were I might blush for; what they are now, I could own without shame. But you, Mr. Darrell—you, in the hour of my uttermost anguish, when all my future was laid desolate, and the world lay crushed at my feet—you—man, chivalrous man!—you had for me no human compassion—you thrust me in scorn from your doors—you saw in my woe nothing but my error—you sent me forth, stripped of reputation, branded by your contempt, to famine or to suicide. And you wonder that I feel less resentment against him who wronged me than against you, who, knowing me wronged, only disdained my grief. The answer is plain—the scorn of the man she only reverenced leaves to a woman no memory to mitigate its bitterness and gall. The wrongs inflicted by the man she loved may leave, what they have left to me, an undying sense of a past existence—radiant, joyous, hopeful; of a time when the earth seemed covered with blossoms, just ready to burst into bloom; when the skies through their haze took the rose-hues as the sun seemed about to rise. The memory that I once was happy, at least then. I owe to him who injured and betrayed me. To you, when happiness was lost to me forever, what do I owe? Tell me."
Struck by her words, more by her impressive manner, though not recognizing the plea by which the defendant thus raised herself into the accuser, Darrell answered gently, "Pardon me; this is no moment to revive recollections of anger on my part; but reflect. I entreat you, and you will feel that I was not too
