Though placed beyond the pale of society-though envied by one extreme and shunned by the other-she finds George her only true friend.  He parts and smooths gently over her polished shoulders her dishevelled hair; he watches over her with the tenderness of a brother; he quenches and wipes away the blood oozing from her wounded breast; he kisses and kisses her flushed cheek, and bathes her Ion-like brow.  He forgives all.  His heart would speak if his tongue had words to represent it.  He would the past were buried-the thought of having wronged him forgotten.  She recognizes in his solicitude for her the sincerity of his heart.  It touches like sweet music the tenderest chords of her own; and like gushing fountains her great black eyes fill with tears.  She buries her face in her hands, crying, “Never, never, George, (I swear it before the God I have wronged, but whose forgiveness I still pray,) will I again forget my obligation to you!  I care not how high in station he who seeks me may be.  Ambitious!—­I was misled.  His money lured me away, but he betrayed me in the face of his promises.  Henceforth I have nothing for this deceptive world; I receive of it nothing but betrayal—­”

“The world wants nothing more of either of us,” interrupts George.

More wounded in her feelings than in her flesh, she sobs and wrings her hands like one in despair.

“You have ambition.  I am too poor to serve your ambition!”

That word, too “poor,” is more than her already distracted brain can bear up under.  It brings back the terrible picture of their past history; it goads and agonizes her very soul.  She throws her arms frantically about his neck; presses him to her bosom; kisses him with the fervor of a child.  Having pledged his forgiveness with a kiss, and sealed it by calling in a witness too often profaned on such occasions, George calms her feelings as best he can; then he smooths with a gentle hand the folds of her uplifted dress, and with them curtains the satin slippers that so delicately encase her small feet.  This done, he spreads over her the richly-lined India morning-gown presented to her a few days ago by the Judge, who, as she says, so wantonly betrayed her, and on whom she sought revenge.  Like a Delian maid, surrounded with Oriental luxury, and reclining on satin and velvet, she flings her flowing hair over her shoulders, nestles her weary head in the embroidered cushion, and with the hand of her only true friend firmly grasped in her own, soothes away into a calm sleep-that sovereign but too transient balm for sorrowing hearts.

Our scene changes.  The ghost hath taken himself to the grave-yard; the morning dawns soft and sunny on what we harmlessly style the sunny city of the sunny South.  Madame Flamingo hath resolved to nail another horse-shoe over her door.  She will propitiate (so she hath it) the god of ghosts.