“Belcour,” said he, “you have injured me in a tender point.”  “Prithee, Jack,” replied Belcour, “do not make a serious matter of it:  how could I refuse the girl’s advances? and thank heaven she is not your wife.”

“True,” said Montraville; “but she was innocent when I first knew her.  It was I seduced her, Belcour.  Had it not been for me, she had still been virtuous and happy in the affection and protection of her family.”

“Pshaw,” replied Belcour, laughing, “if you had not taken advantage of her easy nature, some other would, and where is the difference, pray?”

“I wish I had never seen her,” cried he passionately, and starting from his seat.  “Oh that cursed French woman,” added he with vehemence, “had it not been for her, I might have been happy—­” He paused.

“With Julia Franklin,” said Belcour.  The name, like a sudden spark of electric fire, seemed for a moment to suspend his faculties—­for a moment he was transfixed; but recovering, he caught Belcour’s hand, and cried—­“Stop! stop!  I beseech you, name not the lovely Julia and the wretched Montraville in the same breath.  I am a seducer, a mean, ungenerous seducer of unsuspecting innocence.  I dare not hope that purity like her’s would stoop to unite itself with black, premeditated guilt:  yet by heavens I swear, Belcour, I thought I loved the lost, abandoned Charlotte till I saw Julia—­I thought I never could forsake her; but the heart is deceitful, and I now can plainly discriminate between the impulse of a youthful passion, and the pure flame of disinterested affection.”

At that instant Julia Franklin passed the window, leaning on her uncle’s arm.  She curtseyed as she passed, and, with the bewitching smile of modest cheerfulness, cried—­“Do you bury yourselves in the house this fine evening, gents?” There was something in the voice! the manner! the look! that was altogether irresistible.  “Perhaps she wishes my company,” said Montraville mentally, as he snatched up his hat:  “if I thought she loved me, I would confess my errors, and trust to her generosity to pity and pardon me.”  He soon overtook her, and offering her his arm, they sauntered to pleasant but unfrequented walks.  Belcour drew Mr. Franklin on one side and entered into a political discourse:  they walked faster than the young people, and Belcour by some means contrived entirely to lose sight of them.  It was a fine evening in the beginning of autumn; the last remains of day-light faintly streaked the western sky, while the moon, with pale and virgin lustre in the room of gorgeous gold and purple, ornamented the canopy of heaven with silver, fleecy clouds, which now and then half hid her lovely face, and, by partly concealing, heightened every beauty; the zephyrs whispered softly through the trees, which now began to shed their leafy honours; a solemn silence reigned:  and to a happy mind an evening such as this would give serenity, and calm, unruffled pleasure; but to Montraville, while