CHAPTER XI.

EXPLANATIONS.

Mattie shed many tears of joy at Harriet's return; she was a strong-minded young woman in her way, but the tension of nerve, and the reaction which followed it, had been too much for her, and she was, for a short while, a child in strength and self-command. For awhile they had changed places, Mattie and Harriet--Mattie becoming the agitated and weak girl, Harriet remaining firm, and maintaining an equable demeanour.

"Courage, Mattie!--what have you to give way at?" she said, at last.

"There, I'm better now," said Mattie, looking up into Harriet's face, and keeping her hands upon her shoulders; "and now, will you trust in me?--tell me the whole truth--keep nothing back."

"From you--nothing!"

"And if he has been coward enough to lead you away by the snares of your affection----"

"Affection!" cried Harriet. "I hate him! Coward enough!--he is coward enough for anything that would degrade me--and villain enough to spare no pains to place me in his power. Oh! Mattie--Mattie--what had I done to make him think so meanly of me?--to lead him on to plot against me in so poor and miserable a fashion?"

"You have escaped from him?"

"Thank God, yes!"

Mattie could have cried again with joy, but Harriet's excitement recalled her to self-command--Harriet, who stood there with her whole frame quivering with passion and outraged pride--a woman whom Mattie had not seen till then.

"Mattie," she said, "that man, Maurice Darcy, thought that if I were weak enough to love him, I was weak enough to fly with him, forget my woman's pride, my father, home, honour, and fling all away for his sake. He did not know me, or understand me; my God! he did not think that there were any good thoughts in me, or he would not have acted as he