‘Through all the chit-chat of the time, Marguerite showed herself highly indignant at Van Halsdt’s conduct. The quiet timid girl, who detested violence and hated crime in any shape, felt disgusted at the thought of his poltroonery, and could not hear his name mentioned without an expression of contempt. All this delighted Edward; it seemed to be the just retribution on the former insolence of the other, and he longed for his return to Frankfort to witness the thousand slights that awaited him. ‘Such a strange and unaccountable thing is our triumph over others for the want of those qualities in which we see ourselves deficient. No one is so loud in decrying dishonesty and fraud as the man who feels the knave in his own heart. Who can censure female frailty like her who has felt its sting in her own conscience? You remember the great traveller, Mungo Park, used to calculate the depths of rivers in Africa by rolling heavy stones over their banks and watching the air-bubbles that mounted to the surface; so, oftentimes, may you measure the innate sense of a vice by the execration some censor of morals bestows upon it. Believe me, these heavy chastisements of crime are many times but the cries of awakened conscience. I speak strongly, but I feel deeply on this subject. ‘But to my story. It was the custom for Marguerite and her lover each evening to visit the theatre, where the minister had a box; and as they were stepping into the carriage one night as usual, Van Halsdt drove up to the door and asked if he might accompany them. Of course, a refusal was out of the question; he was a member of the mission; he had done nothing to forfeit his position there, however much he had lost in the estimation of society generally; and they acceded to his request, still with a species of cold courtesy that would, by any other man, have been construed into a refusal. ‘As they drove along in silence, the constraint increased at every moment, and had it not been for the long-suppressed feeling of hated rivalry, Norvins could have pitied Van Halsdt as he sat, no longer with his easy smile of self-satisfied indifference, but with a clouded, heavy brow, mute and pale. As for Marguerite, her features expressed a species of quiet, cold disdain whenever she looked towards him, far more terrible to bear than anything like an open reproach. Twice or thrice he made an effort to start some topic of conversation, but in vain; his observations were either unreplied to, or met a cold, distant assent more chilling still. At length, as if resolved to break through their icy reserve towards him, he asked in a tone of affected indifference-- ‘“Any changes in Frankfort, mademoiselle, since I had the pleasure of seeing you last?” ‘“None, sir, that I know of, save that the French cuirassier regiment marched this morning for Baden, _of which, however, it is more than probable you are aware already_.”