She said this in a hard, emphatic way that indicated her desire to end the discussion. Then she resumed her story. “I got into her confidence by professing sympathy with her, and adopting her point of view,--by anticipating it, I mean, for she was too guarded to disclose it. The poor little idiot fell into the trap. She had been carrying her secret for months, and the burden of it was wearing her out. You know, a nature of that kind must have sympathy, must have some one to listen, must have a confidant. She had not dared to trust her parents, for she knew that they would put a stop to her folly. When she found, as she thought, that I was in full sympathy with her, she laid her poor foolish heart completely open. And what do you think she was going to do?” She turned toward her host as she asked the question, and found him still sitting immovable and looking into the fire. He seemed not to have heard her, for he made no answer; and his stony silence and stillness gave her a strange sensation that might have weighed more with her had she not been so deeply interested in her narrative, and so well satisfied with her part in its happenings. She turned her glance again toward the window, and resumed: “She had decided to run away with this vulgar--fiddler. There was but one thing lacking,--he had not asked her; but she believed that he loved her with all his soul, and that he was having a fight with himself to decide whether it would be right for him to bring so scandalous a thing upon her. She and he both realized that it would be worse than useless for him to ask her parents for her. She said to me, ‘He fears that I shall be unhappy in the poverty that would be my lot if we should go away and marry. He fears that I should miss the luxuries to which I had been accustomed. He fears that my friends will think he had married me for my fortune. He has so many fears, and they are all for me. Yet I know that he would cheerfully lay down his life for me. There never was a man so unselfish, so generous, so ready to sacrifice himself for others.’ “I could hardly keep from laughing while the poor child was telling me all that rubbish. Before employing harsh measures to check her foolish purpose, I resorted to milder ones. While continuing to be sympathetic, I nevertheless said a great many things that would have set her thinking if she had had any sense. I gave her to understand, as delicately as possible (for I was careful not to rouse any resentfulness or stubbornness in her), that her lover undoubtedly was a worthless fellow, as persons of his class are; that he was weak in character and loose in morals; that he was merely a sly adventurer, playing adroitly upon her innocence and confidence, and anxious to leave his laborious life for one of ease at her expense. I compared her station as his wife with that as the wife of a man in her own sphere.