“How perverse is human nature! Man’s nature at least. On my arrival at Arlingford, I missed you whom I had always before shunned, at every turn. I missed the gentle being who had so long, so patiently submitted to my most impertinent vagaries. I missed my poor victim! Every room, every inanimate object recalled her who would have given to all such a charm! I spent hours in your room, Emmeline, in useless, tormenting regrets. In that room which I had hitherto avoided with such care! Alternately condemning myself and you, I felt that I had lost every thing—I was completely miserable!” Greatly exhausted by this narration, during which Fitzhenry had often been interrupted by his cough, he leant back on the couch. The door, at that moment gently opened, and Pelham appeared. On observing the very visible signs of emotion on both his friends countenances, he was again hastily retreating, when Fitzhenry called to him—“No, come in, Pelham; what we were talking about need be no secret from you, for indeed you are principally concerned. I was telling Emmeline all my history. In other words, confessing all my faults; and as you are, God knows, well acquainted with both, I wish you would relieve me, by bringing the narrative to a conclusion; I have owned to her all my strange fears and fancies, my suspicions even of you. Can you, Pelham, ever forgive and forget them? can you forgive the ravings of a madman, for such they now appear to me to have been.” “Don’t be too humble in your apologies to me,” said Pelham, smiling—“for I am not sure how far I am myself innocent, if it is guilt to esteem, to admire, to——” Pelham stopped, for a minute. “In short,” added he—“I had more than half a mind to punish you, Fitzhenry, for your extreme stupidity; and endeavour myself to win the pearl of great price which you rejected; but, from the first, I had, luckily for me, penetration sufficient to discover that the attempt would be perfectly hopeless.” Pelham said this in the light tone of pleasantry; but, as he spoke, his eyes glanced mournfully on Emmeline, and a slight tinge of red momentarily suffused his sallow cheek. But his emotion totally escaped Emmeline’s observation, whose eyes and attention were entirely fixed on her husband, fearful of losing a word, or look. Fitzhenry, however, saw all; his eye moistened as he held out his hand to his friend, and warmly pressed his within it. “Well Pelham, now you must take up our history from my sudden departure for Arlingford, where you found me; and do not spare me; I deserve thoroughly the worst you may be tempted to say of me.”