"Arrested! What for?" cried I, relieved beyond measure at hearing it was a distress which money could remove. "Aye, Helen, dearest creature! There is the pang--for a debt so weakly contracted!" "Oh! a gaming debt to Lord Charles, I suppose?" "No, no, would it were!--though I own that way also I have been very culpable." "Keep me no longer in suspense, I conjure you." "Why you know what a rash marriage that silly girl Charlotte Jermyn made." "Go on." "Well--her husband was forced to sell his commission to pay his debts: but that was not sufficient; and to save him from a jail, I had the folly to be bound for him in no less a sum than several hundreds." "But who asked you? Are they in London?" "They were." "And you saw them?" "Yes." "Why did you not tell me they were here?" "Because they were persons with whom I did not choose my wife to associate." "Were they fit associates for you then?" was on my tongue, but I suppressed it; for mistaken indeed is the wife who thinks reproach can ever do ought but alienate the object of it. "But did you often visit them? and what made them presume to apply to you?" "Necessity. She wrote to me again and again, and she way-laid me too--what could I do? I was never proof against a woman's tears--and I was bound for him." "Well, and what then?" "Why, the rascal is gone off, and left his wife without a farthing, to maintain herself as she can." "Is she in London?" cried I, turning very faint. "No, at Dover; but, as soon as it is known that he is off, I expect to be arrested for the money; and for me to raise it is impossible; but you, Helen--" "Yes, yes--I understand you," I replied, speaking with great difficulty: "the legacy--I will drive instantly to the bankers--and take it, take it all, if you wish." Here my voice and even my eye-sight totally failed me, and almost my intellects; but I neither fell nor fainted.--Miserable suspicions and certain anxiety came over me, and in one moment life seemed converted into a dreary void. My situation alarmed Pendarves almost to phrensy. He rung for the servants, sent for the nearest surgeon, without my being able to oppose any thing he ordered--for I could not speak: and I was carried to my room, and even bled, before I had the power of uttering a word. "The lady has undergone a violent shock," said the surgeon; and the conscience-stricken Seymour ran out of the room in an agony too mighty for expression. I was now forced to swallow some strong nervous medicine; and at length, feeling myself able to speak again, I ejaculated "Thank God!" and fell into a passion of tears, which considerably relieved me. My kind but officious maid had meanwhile sent for Mrs. Pendarves, who eagerly demanded the original cause of my seizure. "Dearest Helen, do you tell your aunt," said Seymour, "how it was."