have seen crowned heads, statesmen, great military chieftains, and geniuses, whose names are destined to immortality; but standing here, reviewing my certainly extended acquaintance, I swear I envy above all others that handsome monk whom Curzon found at Simopetra, who had never seen a woman!  He was transplanted to the Holy Mountain while a mere infant, and though assured he had had a mother, he accepted the statement with the same blind faith, which was required for some of the religious dogmas he was called on to swallow.  I have frequently wondered whether the ghost of poor Socrates would not be allowed, in consideration of his past sufferings and trials, to wander forever in that peaceful realm where even female ghosts are tabooed.”

“There is some terrible retribution in store for your libels on our sex!  How I do long to meet some woman brave and wily enough to marry and tame you, my chivalric cousin! to revenge the insults you have heaped upon her sisterhood!”

“By fully establishing the correctness of my estimate of their amiability?  That were dire punishment indeed for what you deem my heresies.  If I could realize the possibility of such a calamity, I should certainly bewail my fate in the mournful words of that most astute of female wits, who is reported to have exclaimed, in considering the angelic idiosyncrasies of her gentle sisterhood, ’The only thought which can reconcile me to being a woman is that I shall not have to marry one.”

The expression with which Mr. Murray regarded Estelle reminded Edna of the account given by a traveller of the playful mood of a lion, who, having devoured one gazelle, kept his paw on another, and, amid occasional growls, teased and toyed with his victim.

As the orphan sat bending over her work listening to the conversation, she asked herself scornfully: 

“What hallucination has seized me?  The man is a mocking devil, unworthy the respect or toleration of any Christian woman.  What redeeming trait can even my partial eyes discover in his distorted, sinful nature?  Not one.  No, not one!”

She was rejoiced when he uttered a sarcasm or an opinion that shocked her, for she hoped that his irony would cauterize what she considered a cancerous spot in her heart.

“Edna, as you are not well, I advise you to put aside that embroidery, which must try your eyes very severely,” said Mrs. Murray.

So she folded up the piece of cambric and was putting it in her basket, when Mr. Allston asked, with more effrontery than the orphan was prepared for: 

“Miss Earl, have I not seen you before to-day?”

“Yes, sir.”

“May I ask where?”

“In a chestnut grove, where you shot Mr. Dent.”

“Indeed!  Did you witness that affair?  It happened many years ago.”

There was not a shadow of pain or sorrow in his countenance or tone, and, rising, Edna said, with unmistakable emphasis: