“The mean scoundrel, to sell himself for money!!”

“No, David, he would not have sold himself, with his eyes open, any more than perhaps your Miss Fountain would; but what little heart he had he could give to any girl that was not a fright.  He was a self-deceiver and a general lover, and such characters and their affections sink by nature to where their interest lies.  Iron is not conscious, yet it creeps toward the loadstone.  Well, while she was with me I held up and managed to question her as coldly as I speak to you now, but as soon as she left me I went off in violent hysterics.”

“Poor Eve!”

“She had not been gone an hour when doesn’t the Devil put it into his head to send me a long, affectionate letter, and in the postscript he invited himself to supper the same afternoon.  Then I got up and dried my eyes, and I seemed to turn into stone with resolution.  ‘Come!’ I said, ’but don’t think you shall ever go back to her.  Your troubles and mine shall end to-night.’”

“Why, Eve, you turn pale with thinking of it.  I fear you have had worse thoughts pass through your mind than any man is worth.”

“David, your blood was in my veins, and mine is in yours.

“If I didn’t think so!  The Lord deliver us from temptation!  We don’t know ourselves nor those we love.”

“He had driven me mad.”

“Mad, indeed.  What! had you the heart to see the man bleed to death—­the man you had loved—­you, my little gentle Eve?”

“Oh no, no; no blood!” said Eve, with a shudder.  “Laudanum!”

“Good God!”

“Oh, I see your thought.  No, I was not like the men in the newspapers, that kill the poor woman with a sure hand, and then give themselves a scratch.  It was to be one spoonful for him, but two for me.  I can’t dwell on it” (and she hid her face in her hands); “it is too terrible to remember how far I was misled.  Who, think you, saved us both?” David could not guess.

“A little angel—­my good angel, that came home from sea that very afternoon.  When I saw your curly head, and your sweet, sunburned face come in at the door, guess if I thought of putting death in the pot after that?  Ah! the love of our own flesh and blood, that is the love—­God and good angels can smile on it.”

“Yes; but go on,” said David, impatiently.

“It is ended, David.  They say a woman’s heart is a riddle, and perhaps you will think so when I tell you that when he had brought me down to this, and hadn’t died for it, I turned as cold as ice to him that minute, once and forever.  I looked back at the precipice, and I hated him.  Ay, from that evening he was like the black dog to my eye.  I used to slip anywhere to hide out of his way—­just as you did out of mine but now.”

“Can’t you forget that?  Well, to be sure.  Well?”