was playing me false, and that she had deceived others. I struck a key, which I knew would give a true sound--her love for you. She had heard your name coupled with his, she said; and once, a direct assertion of your attachment for him, but it was from lying lips. If I have wearied and displeased you, intimate it. If not--here are the proofs to secure you revenge or happiness. Say the word, and the dupe is enlightened. She will not suffer more, that you connive at her disgrace. Her mortification will be public, and is inevitable. Where is Mr. Lacy?" "I do not know, and would not tell you if I did!" cried Ida. "If I were dying of a broken heart, I would refuse the healing your cold-blooded scheme offered. She may be--I believe her unworthy of him; but when he sought her, he was shackled by no vows to me. He is not a vain boy, to be flattered into a courtship! if duped, she has cruelly deceived the noblest heart that ever beat. I honor him more for not discovering her snare, than you, for mastering her in duplicity. No! Mr. Copeland! I have no wrongs to avenge upon him or her--nor is it your prerogative, to retaliate for your, or your sister's injuries. We do not understand each other! You impute traits to me, which the weakest of my sex would blush to own; and I thought you generous--high-minded! 'Fallen,' indeed!" Her voice shook, and her head sank upon the table. The man of the world was confounded. The lofty tone of her principles lowered his plotted vengeance into unmanly spite. He had been incited to it by the low standard of the sex, his sister's and her associate's conduct had set up in his mind; and a desire to betray the baseness of the currency the accomplished coquette was passing off upon society--backed by a justifiable displeasure at the evils of which she was the author. "I am to understand that you disdain my offer to serve you?" he said, rising. She looked up. "To serve me! how thankfully I would avail myself of such! I was hasty--unkind! Do not go yet!" He sat down. "It is all so confused!" she said, apologetically. "You are engaged to Lelia Arnold, and do not love her:--yet you must have told her that you did!" He colored, and did not reply. "You are meditating a punishment for her--what has she done that you have not?" "Falsehood--unprovoked falsehood is viler in a woman. I was driven to it." "Viler in a woman--more despicable in a man! You should be above the petty vanity and ambition, that if cultivated, root up our better feelings. Selfishness, love of admiration, and in your case, pique, actuated her;--you have the bare plea of malice!" "Miss Ross! malice!" "Examine, and say if it is not so. Punishment, in this world, has cure for its object. Was this yours? or was it that she might endure the pain she had inflicted upon others?" "Call it retribution." "There is but one Retributive Being. He says 'Vengeance is mine!'" "You are unsophisticated, Miss Ida. Your maxims are obsolete in the polity of the age."