feet, I would have spurned him from me with indignation and scorn.  I could not but be conscious that the very act of having yielded myself up to him, had armed my lover with the power to accuse me of infidelity, and the more I fingered on the want of generosity such a suspicion implied, the more rooted became my dislike, the more profound my contempt for him, who could thus repay so great a proof of confidingness and affection.”

“It was even while I lay grovelling at his feet,” pursued Matilda, after a momentary pause, during which she evinced intense agitation, “that this sadden change (excited by this most unheard of injustice) came over my mind—­I rose and stood before him; then asked, in a voice in which no evidence of passion could be traced, what excuse he meant to make to Major Montgomerie, for having thus broken off his engagement.  He started at my sudden calmness of manner, but said that he thought it might be as well for my sake to name, what I had already stated to him, in regard to the obscurity of my birth, as a plea for his seceding from the connexion.  I told him that, under all the circumstances I thought this most advisable, and then pointing to the door, bade him begone, and never under any pretext whatever again to insult me with his presence.  When he had departed, I burst into a paroxysm of tears, but they were tears shed not for the loss of him I now despised, but of wild sorrow at my unmerited degradation.  That conflict over, the weakness had for ever passed away, and never since that hour, has tear descended cheek of mine, associated with the recollection of the villain who had thus dared to trifle with a heart, the full extent of whose passions he has yet to learn.”

There was a trembling of the whole person of Matilda, which told how much her feelings had been excited by the recollection of what she narrated, and Gerald, as he gazed on her beautiful form, could not but wonder at the apathy of the man who could thus have heartlessly thrown if from him for ever.

“Had the injury terminated here,” resumed Matilda, “bitter as my humiliation was my growing dislike for him who had so ungenerously inflicted it, might have enabled me to endure it.  But, not satisfied with destroying the happiness of her who had sacrificed all for his sake, my perfidious lover had yet a blow in reserve for me, compared with which his antecedent conduct was mercy.  Gerald,” she continued, as she pressed his arm with a convulsive grasp, “will you believe that the monster had the infamy to confide to one of his most intimate associates, that his rupture with me was occasioned by his having discovered me in the arms of a slave—­of one of those vile beings communion with whom my soul in any sense abhorred?  How shall I describe the terrible feeling that came over my insulted heart at that moment.  But no, no—­description were impossible.  This associate—­this friend of his—­ dared, on the very strength of this infamous imputation, to pollute my ear with