know what you must have thought of us; but in our place we could not but have doubted. Kate, I have heard so much of you these last three days. I do so want to love you, and to be loved by you. I know you are so worthy to be Frank’s wife; can you not forgive me, Kate? can you not, thinking of what I have suffered, take me to your heart?” Kate had listened at first coldly, and then tearfully, and at last, as Alice ceased she threw herself upon Alice’s neck, and cried, “Oh, Alice! why did we not know each other before?” With the exception of Fanny Larpent, who was too young for Kate to confide her great troubles to, she had, since she married, had no female friend, and she had often longed for some one in whom she could really trust and confide all the feelings which she had so bravely concealed from her husband. When Alice began to speak, she had hardened herself against her. She had determined not to melt, but this cry for forgiveness of the stately woman before her had broken down the barrier she had set up; and Kate, when she once gave way, gave way altogether. To both women tears were a relief. Alice, who had cried most before, was the first to recover now. “I must tell you the whole story, Katie. I may call you Katie, mayn’t I?” “Yes, Alice, but I don’t want to know the story. I am content to know it was all a mistake, and I am glad to hear that Frank’s uncle has come to say good-bye to him; for Frank will, I know, always be glad to think kindly of his uncle, and of you, Alice,” she put in; “Frank never believed you were against him.” “But, Katie,” Alice said, “we have not come to say good-bye at all, we have come to take you on shore. Yes, really, Katie,” she said, earnestly, as Kate made a motion of positive denial. “Poor James, uncle’s grandson, cannot live long, and uncle wants Frank and you to come and live with him and be his children.” “He has got Mr. Bingham,” Kate said, coldly; “neither Frank nor I want to take his place.” “Fred Bingham has turned out a very wicked man, Katie. It was for his fault that we have doubted poor Frank; but it has all come to light now, and uncle will never see him again.” “Really, Alice?” Kate exclaimed. “It is very wicked, I know—but then I am not, not at all good—but I hate Fred Bingham; if I was a man I should kill him. You may look shocked, Alice, but I don’t care, I would kill him.” And there is no doubt that Fred Bingham would have fared but badly if he had fallen into Kate Maynard’s hands. “And now, Katie, I will tell you the whole story; and I am sure, if you can forget for a moment you are Frank’s wife, and can put yourself in our place, you will allow that there is a good excuse for us in having believed what we heard, and having doubted all we had previously known of him.” Very quietly and clearly Alice Heathcote went through the long and complicated story. Kate listened attentively to it, and when Alice had finished she said, frankly,—