CHAPTER III.

Let the reader transport himself to a small stone cottage on the Hudson, and he will behold me as I was at the age of twenty-one. I had reached that acme of woman's career when common sense is to her as nothing, and the world with all its follies bursts upon her ravished ears with ten-fold succulence. My grandfather had been dead some fifty years, and I was even thinking of him, when the door opened, and Mr. Higgins entered. I felt my heart palpitate, and was about to quit the room, when he cast a searching glance at me, and said:

"Well, girl--are you as big a fool as ever?"

I hung my head, for the tell-tale blush _would_ bloom.

"Come," said Mr. Higgins, "don't speak like a donkey. I'm no priestly confessor. Curse the priests! Curse the world! Curse everybody! Curse everything!" And he placed his feet upon the mantel-piece, and gazed meditatively into the fire.

I could hear the beatings of my own heart, and all the warmth of my nature went forth to meet this sublime embodiment of human majesty; yet I dared not speak.

After a short silence, Mr. Higgins took a chew of tobacco, and placing his hand on my shoulder, exclaimed:

"Why should I deceive you, girl? Last night I poisoned my only remaining sister because she would have wed a circus-keeper, and scarcely an hour ago I lost two millions at faro. Your priests would say this was wrong--hey?"

I stifled my sobs and said, as calmly as I could:

"Our Church looks at the motive, not the deed. If a high sense of honor compelled you to poison all your relatives and play faro, the sin was rather the effect of vice in others than in your own noble heart, and I doubt not you may be called innocent."

He glanced into the fire a few hours, and then said:

"Go, Galushianna!--I would be alone! Go, innocent young scorpion."

Oh, Higgins, Higgins, if I could have died for thee then, I don't know but I should have done it!