“I had the pleasure of a long interview with Mr. Mandeville last evening.  He was in much distress at your absence, and thought you were very undutiful to leave him in his old age without even a parting word.”

At this unfeeling recital, Eveline cast upon the heartless wretch a look of indignation, and her dark eyes fairly shot fire; he quailed under the scathing rebuke of those orbs, as he had often done before, but was chagrined that he had been unable to draw a single word from her lips, and mentally resolving to bring her to the speaking point, he proceeded: 

“But sorry and indignant as he was at your conduct, he was far more deeply exasperated at Hadley.”

“Hadley!” repeated she, in the first moment of surprise.

“Yes; that very loving letter he addressed to you fell into your parent’s hands, together with another one from the same writer, directed to himself wherein Hadley asks forgiveness for himself, and especially for you, fair lady, whom he represents to be in deep distress, that love irresistibly draws you to him and away from home.”

“Villain!” ejaculated Eveline, with flashing eye.

“Be careful of your words, my dear; you are not now in your father’s house, and it may not suit my purpose to allow you the use of such epithets, as applied to myself.”

With this remark, Eveline at once turned to her book and commenced reading again, as much as to say:—­“Have the conversation all to yourself, then!” and the miscreant so understood and interpreted the act, and felt that he was outgeneraled by the superior tactics of his opponent, notwithstanding the immense advantage he was master of in the contest.

“Nay, fair lady,” he said, “I did not intend to cut you off from the privilege of speech, but only to advise you to be a little careful in the use of terms and epithets.”

“Sir, if after forcing a conversation upon me on your own terms, and at an advantage of your own choosing, you are too cowardly to hear what I please to say, you must talk to yourself.  When I speak at all I select my own words.  I do not belong to that class of contemptible poltroons, who slink behind others to hide themselves and their crimes, basely exposing the innocent to the censures and punishment that should fall upon their own guilty heads.  No, sir; woman as I am I would scorn to stoop to such a low depth of infamy to screen myself from any position, even from death itself; and if you, with all this littleness of mind and cringing cowardice of soul, expect to intimidate me by any menaces, all I have to say is, you have ‘reckoned without your host.’  And permit me to tell you that there are no words in any language half adequate to express my contempt of you as a man, or my abhorrence of your acts as a criminal, of whom, thus far, the gallows has been shamefully cheated.”

This bold speech fairly took the rascal out of himself.  He ground his teeth in rage and seemed on the point of committing some desperate deed, but those unquailing and flashing eyes were fixed upon him with a look that seemed to burn into his innermost soul, and penetrate its dark recesses of guilt.  He was again conquered by that look; there was a magnetic power about it he could not withstand; and swallowing his rage as best he could, replied after this manner: