Poor Charlotte started back as if she had seen a wild beast in her kitchen.  She had heard of his dishonesty, and her thoughts flew distractedly to her spoons, murder, and the children.  And here he was advancing gracefully to take her hand.  She jumped back, and exclaimed, faintly, ’Mr. Delaford, please go away!  I can’t think what you come here for!’

‘Ah!  I see, you have listened to the voice of unkind scandal,’ said Mr. Delaford.  ’I have been unfortunate, Miss Arnold—­unfortunate and misunderstood—­guilty never.  On the brink of quitting for ever an ungrateful country, I could not deny myself the last sad satisfaction of visiting the spot where my brightest hours have been passed;’ and he looked so pathetic, that Charlotte felt her better sense melting, and spoke in a hurry—­

’Please don’t, Mr. Delaford, I’ve had enough of all that.  Please go, and take my best wishes, as long as you don’t come here, for I know all about you.’

But the intruder only put his hand upon his heart, and declared that he had been misrepresented; and let a cruel world think of him as it might, there was one breast in which he could not bear that a false opinion, of him should prevail.  And therewith he reached a chair, and Charlotte found herself seated and listening to him, neither believing, nor wishing to believe him, longing that he would take himself away, but bewildered by his rhetoric.  In the first place, he had been hastily judged; he had perhaps yielded too much to Sir Walter—­but youth, &c.; and when Lady Conway’s means were in his hands, it had seemed better—­he knew now that it had been a weakness, but so he had judged at the time—­to supply the young gentleman’s little occasions, than to make an eclat.  Moreover, if he had not been the most unfortunate wretch in the world, a few lucky hits would have enabled him to restore the whole before Lord Fitzjocelyn hurried on the inquiry; but the young gentleman thought he acted for the best, and Mr. Delaford magnanimously forgave him.

Charlotte could not follow through half the labyrinth; and sat pinching the corner of her apron, with a vague idea that perhaps he was not so bad as was supposed; but what would happen if her master should find him there?  She never looked up, nor made any answer, till he began to give her a piteous account of his condition; how he did not know where to turn, nor what to do; and was gradually beginning to sell off his ’little wardrobe to purchase the necessaries of life.’  Then the contrast began to tell on her soft heart, and she looked up with a sound of compassion.

In the wreck of his fortunes and hopes, he had thought of her; he knew she had too generous a spirit to crush a wretch trodden down by adversity, who had loved her truly, and who had once had some few hopes of requital.  Those were, alas! at an end; yet still he saw that ’woman, lovely woman, in our hours of ease’—­And here he stumbled in his quotation, but the fact was, that his hopes being blasted in England, he had decided on trying his fortune in another hemisphere; but, unfortunately, he had not even sufficient means to pay for a passage of the humblest description, and if he could venture to entreat for a—­in fact, a loan—­it should be most faithfully and gratefully restored the moment the fickle goddess should smile on him.