Miss Vernon breathed freer.

“You have made him very happy,” resumed Miss Evans, “by consenting to remain with him and his daughter.  They are both much attached to you.”

A flush of pain she could not conceal passed over the face of the caller.  “O, if I might but speak to you as I would,” she said, almost fainting with emotion.

“Do tell me in words what you have already so plainly told me in your looks.  Tell me freely the cause of the shadow that hangs over you.”

In response to this appeal, Florence related the experience of the morning.

“I am not at all surprised at this,” said Miss Evans, after the statement had been made, “for well I know the dark surmisings that the dwellers in this little village have worked up into imaginary evils.  Sages would no doubt assert that all rumors have some degree of truth, however slight, for a foundation.  This may be true; at least I will not deny that it is so, but the instigators of the cruel slanders in this case have nothing but ignorance upon which to base them.  Hugh Wyman is what some might call eccentric.  The fact is, he is so far beyond the majority of his fellow men that he stands alone, and is the cause of great clamor among those who do not know him.  He expresses his views upon social questions freely but wisely.  His opinions respecting the social relations that should exist between men and women, and their right to selfhood, are not his alone, but are held by the best minds in the world; and his home is often visited by men and women of the largest culture and ability, both as thinkers and writers.  I do not wonder for a moment that your equilibrium was disturbed by these shallow-brained women.  And now before I advocate my friend’s honesty and virtue farther, I will tell you, what no one save myself and he knows, of one of the women who called upon you this morning.  It is your due, after what has occurred, and belongs to this moment.  I believe in such moments it is right to raise the veil of the past.  Listen:—­

“A few years ago, one of that number who came to you, sought by every subterfuge and art, to gain the affections of Hugh Wyman.  Intellectually, spiritually, in every way his inferior, of course he could not for a moment desire her society.  Yet she sought him at all times, and when, at last, he told her in words what he had all along so forcibly expressed by his acts, that he had not even respect for her, and bade her cease her maneuverings, she turned upon him in slander; and even on his wedding day asserted that his fair Alice was a woman of no repute—­abandoned by her friends.  Nor is this all;-one year after the marriage of Hugh, she gave birth to a child; it was laid at night at his door, and he was charged with being its father.”

“But was she married, then?”

“No.  She subsequently went to a small village in N—­, and married.”

“Did the town people believe her story?”