"No. Madam Rumor is my informant, and her story is vouched for by a gentleman, an eye witness of the catastrophe." In this lamentable caricature, there was so little truth, and so much less wit, that it should have been beneath the contempt of her, at whom it was aimed; but the ridicule was _public_. Her bonnet hid her face, but the angry blood surged over her neck in crimson streams. There was vengeful fury enough in the grasp, which drove the nails through the paper she held, into the palm, to have swept the tittering clique from the earth at a stroke. Whatever purpose of retaliation sprang into life, it was nipped in the bud. The desk of the supposed artist was in a niche; and the projecting wall concealed it from the view of the party. He was almost in front of her; and her burning eyes were arrested as they encountered his. There was no scorn, or none for her, in that regard; but warning, interest and inquiry were blended with such earnestness, that, like the charmed bird, he could not move or look away. Even when he cast his eyes upon his work again, she did not, at once, withdraw hers. He might have been thirty; was pale, and not handsome, yet anything but ordinary in his appearance. If his countenance had betrayed emotion the previous moment, it vanished as his pen began to move. He was the automaton scribe, and the subdued Ida, drawing her shawl around her, quitted the place, without exchanging a syllable with any one. The spell of the silent rebuke was speedily dissolved, yet she was grateful that it had restrained her hasty retort. The heated in a quarrel, are always the defeated. Morbid sensibility is the engenderer of suspicion,--and vice versa; the two act and react, until a smile, a look, is the foundation of weeks--it may be, of years of wretchedness. To such a mind, ridicule is a venomed dart, piercing and poisoning, and pride but inflames the wound. Dr. Ballard had showed the courtesy of a gentleman, and the kindness of a friend in his intercourse with Ida. Unconsciously, she had come to like, almost to trust him--and this was at an end. He, and he, only, could have provided the outline of the narrative she had heard. She set her teeth hard, as she recalled her agitated greeting at the gate; and his composure; her subsequent offers of assistance--"officious"--she called them now,--and his calm acceptance. But it was base and unmanly, to make capital for sport of the weakness of a woman--a child, compared with himself! "They are all alike--I must believe it! with hearts rotten to the core! Heaven have mercy on me, until I am as callous as they!" And when he called, at some personal inconvenience, to impart the intelligence of her "protege's" recovery, she met him with a haughtiness that surprised and angered him; and his futile attempt to throw down the barrier, resulted in his cutting short the interview. He had told Mr. Read of Ida's adventure; but not in the spirit in which its events were coarsely retailed.