“It is for you to speak, Alfred,” was her reply. It was full of significance, understood but not FELT by her companion. What, indeed, had she to say--what could she say--while he said nothing? She was the victim. With him lay the means of rescue and preservation. She but waited the decision of one whom, in her momentary madness, she had made the arbiter of her destiny. Her reply confused him. He would have preferred to listen to the ordinary language of reproach. Had she burst forth into tears and lamentations--had she cried, “You have wronged me--you must do me justice!”--he would have been better pleased than with the stern, unsuggestive character that she assumed. To all this, his old experience would have given him an easy answer. But to be driven to condemn himself--to define his own doings with the name due to his deserts--to declare his crime, and proffer the sufficient atonement--was an unlooked-for necessity. “You are displeased with me, Margaret.” He dared not meet her glance while uttering this feeble and purposeless remark. It was so short of all that he should have said--of all that she expected--that her eyes glistened with a sudden expression of indignation which was new to them in looking upon him. There was a glittering sarcasm in her glance, which showed the intensity of her feelings in the comment which they involuntarily made on the baldness and poverty of his. Displeasure, indeed! That such an epithet should be employed to describe the withering pang, the vulturous, gnawing torture in her bosom--and that fiery fang which thought, like some winged serpent, was momentarily darting into her brain! “Displeased!” she exclaimed, in low, bitter tones, which she seemed rather desirous to suppress--“no, no! sir--not displeased. I am miserable, most miserable--anything but displeased. I am too wretched to feel displeasure!” “And to me you owe this wretchedness, dear Margaret--THAT--THAT is what you would say. Is it not, Margaret? I have wronged--I have ruined you! From me comes this misery! You hate, you would denounce me.” He put his arm about her waist--he sank upon his knee beside her--his eye, now that he had found words, could once more look courageously into hers. “Wronged--ruined!” she murmured, using a part of his words, and repeating them as if she did not altogether realize their perfect sense. “Ay, you would accuse me, Margaret,” he continued--“you would reproach and denounce me--you hate me--I deserve it--I deserve it.” She answered with some surprise:-- “No, Alfred Stevens, I do not accuse--I do not denounce you. I am wretched--I am miserable. It is for you to say if I am wronged and ruined. I am not what I was--I know THAT!--What I am--what I will be!--” She paused! Her hands were clasped suddenly and violently--she looked to heaven, and, for the first time, the tears, streamed from her eyes like rain--a sudden, heavy shower, which was soon over.