“I am intuitive and sensitive. As soon as I began to notice this unspoken suspicion, I began to look guilty. My face flamed red at the mention of his name or any allusion to the case. You can understand that, but minds of a lower grade could not. They construed it as a sign of guilt, yet it was but the knowledge of their offensive thoughts that embarrassed and unsettled me. To know that I was suspected made me look confused and guilty. It was always so even when I was a child at school. If a culprit were sought, I looked like one. You know, however, that most people are mere surface readers of others, and nothing in the world is so little understood as a delicate, sensitive, high spirit. I who was far removed in thought from that of which I was suspected, crimsoned with horror when I encountered this base suspicion in the faces of those who harbored it, and it made me self-conscious and shy when I spoke with Doring himself. In short, it ate into me and destroyed my peace. “In a little while the air grew black with it. All pretence of concealment was abandoned, and significant looks blossomed into speech. They said Doring and I were infatuated with each other, and that he had killed his wife in order to be able to marry me, and that I had put him up to it. The vilest and falsest tales were circulated about us. The miserable local newspapers printed thinly-veiled insinuations, and fool friends came and poured abhorrent stories into my ears. “The brutal malevolence of their lies amazed as well as horrified me. I could not see what I had done to bring such an avalanche of malice upon me. You may imagine what I suffered. Alone, and with a heart that had in it originally nothing but good will for everybody, this cruel experience almost withered me for life. “I longed to leave the accursed place which now seemed peopled with devils. Driven almost to desperation, at last I went forth to find a spot untainted by the hatred that there had destroyed my peace. I came here to Gougal’s great engraving house, and with nothing in the way of help or influence from anybody, asked for employment and got it.--‘Ask and ye shall receive’ being a true law. Here I have been ever since, almost happy--at least not miserable.