Time rolled heavily by, and some few weeks passed, ere Emmeline was sufficiently convalescent to leave her room, and then her pallid features and attenuated form were such constant and evident proofs of that mental as well as bodily fever, that Mrs. Hamilton could not look on her without pain.  She was still inwardly restless and uneasy, though evidently struggling for cheerfulness, and Mr. Maitland, to whom some necessary particulars of her tale had been told, gave as his opinion, that some secret anxiety still rested on her mind, which would be much better removed; the real cause of that solicitude her parents very easily penetrated.  Mr. Hamilton, fearing the effects of excitement in her still very delicate state, had refrained from telling her all he had accomplished in young Myrvin’s favour during her sickness, but on hearing Mr. Maitland’s report, her parents both felt assured it was for that information she pined, and therefore determined on instantly giving her relief.

It was with the utmost tenderness and caution Mr. Hamilton alluded to the subject, and seating himself by her couch, playfully asked her if she would promise him to get well the sooner, if he gratified her by the pleasing intelligence that Arthur Myrvin’s character was cleared, that his enemy had been discovered, his designs exposed, and himself obliged to leave the village, and the whole population were now as violently prejudiced in Arthur’s favour, as they had formerly been against him; provoked also with themselves for their blind folly in receiving and encouraging the idle reports propagated against him, not one of which they now perceived were sufficiently well founded to stand before an impartial statement and accurate examination.

Had her parents doubted what had weighed on Emmeline’s mind, the sudden light beaming in those saddened eyes, the flush kindling on those pale cheeks, the rapid movement with which she caught her father’s hand, and looked in his face, as if fearful he would deceive her, all these minute but striking circumstances must have betrayed the truth.  In a voice almost inarticulate from powerful emotion, she implored him to tell her every particular, and tenderly he complied.

He had followed, he said, her advice, and confronted Nurse Langford with the unprincipled man who had dared accuse a fellow-creature of a crime in reality committed by himself, and reckless as he was, he had shrunk in guilt and shame before her accusation, which was indeed the accusation of the dying, and avowing himself the real perpetrator of the sin, offered her a large bribe for secrecy, which, as might be expected, the widow indignantly refused.  It was easy to perceive, his arts had worked on the old woman, Mary’s grandmother, to believe him her friend and Arthur her foe; the poor old creature’s failing intellect assisted his plans, while the reports he had insidiously circulated against the unfortunate young man also confirmed his tale.  Little aware that the Widow