of prudence compelled me to receive in private, even although my heart abhorred and loathed the relationship between us.  He treated my explanation with deriding contempt, bidding me either produce that father within twenty-four hours, or find some easier fool to persuade—­that one, wearing the hue and features of the black could, by human possibility, be the parent of a white woman.  Again I explained the seeming incongruity, by urging that the hasty and imperfect view he had taken was of a mask, imitating the features of a negro, which my father had brought with him as a disguise, and which he had hastily resumed on hearing the noise of the key in the door.  I even admitted, as an excuse for seeing him thus clandestinely, the lowly origin of my father, and the base occupation he followed of a treacherous spy who, residing in the Canadas, came, for the mere consideration of gold, to sell political information to the enemies of the country that gave him asylum and protection.  I added that his visit to me was to extort money, under a threat of publishing our consanguinity, and that dread of his (my lover’s) partiality being decreased by the disclosure, had induced me to throw my arms, in the earnestness of entreaty upon his neck, and implore his secrecy; promising to reward him generously for his silence.  I moreover urged him, if he still doubted, to make inquiry of Major Montgomerie, and ascertain from him whether I was not indeed the niece of his adoption, and not of his blood.  Finally I humbled myself in the dust and, like a fawning reptile, clasped his knees in my arms, entreating mercy and justice.  But no,” and the voice of Matilda grew deeper, and her form became more erect; “neither mercy nor justice dwelt in that hard heart, and he spurned me rudely from him.  Nothing short of the production of him he persisted in calling my vile paramour, would satisfy him; but my ignoble parent had received from me the reward of his secrecy, and he had departed once more to the Canadas.  And thus,” pursued Matilda, her voice trembling with emotion, “was, I made the victim of the most diabolical suspicion that ever haunted the breast of man.”

Gerald was greatly affected.  His passion for Matilda seemed to increase in proportion with his sympathy for her wrongs, and he clasped her energetically to his heart.

“Finding him resolute in attaching to me the debasing imputation,” pursued the American, “it suddenly flashed upon my mind, that this was but a pretext to free himself from his engagement, and that he was glad to accomplish his object through the first means that offered.  Oh, Gerald, I cannot paint the extraordinary change that came over my feelings at this thought; much less give, you an idea of the rapidity with which that change was effected.  One moment before and, although degraded and unjustly accused, I had loved him with all the ardour of which a woman’s heart is capable:  Now I hated, loathed, detested him; and had he sunk at my