Mrs. Varley turned every imaginable color as the relation proceeded—pale, red, speckled and spotted. She was utterly confounded for a moment, and then she exclaimed, as she seized Mrs. Tower’s passive hand in both her own. “Josepha Gordon! I have sometimes thought it must be the same!” “Josepha Gordon was my maiden name,” replied Mrs. Tower, calmly yet sorrowfully watching the whirlwind in poor Mrs. Varley’s soul. “Twenty years, and bitter sorrows, have wrought more changes in me than fortune has in _you_, Cynthia Varley. But have I spoken truly?” Mrs. Varley could scarcely reply; she sunk down upon the sofa completely overcome. Mortification and deep humiliation seemed to paralyze her faculties. Tears, and sobs, and groans, right pitiful to witness followed. One moment a storm of furious passion rose in her bosom, and the next a torrent of tears poured over her cheeks. “It is all true,” she stammered at length; “but O don’t, for mercy’s sake, don’t expose us! It would be our ruin, our utter ruin, and I am sure I have suffered enough already. I will restore your jewels fourfold,” and she began nervously working at a magnificent diamond that sparkled on her bosom. “Keep the jewels, Mrs. Varley. I do not need them, neither will I accept what you have so long called your own,” said Mrs. Tower mildly. “I know not what remorseful visitings have struggled in your heart, but if they had wrought a moral renovation there, I would have left this painful story in oblivion, and spared you so much humiliation. Believe me, Mrs. Varley, _money_ is not the true criterion in estimating respectability or character, as you seem to judge. That man is poor indeed who only possesses heaps of shining gold, though so great he cannot count their value—but the wealth garnered in the heart, the gems of virtue set around the immortal soul, are the only imperishable riches, which are the legitimate and justifiable ambition of an imperishable nature. I will keep your secret sacredly, as I have kept it these many years that we have been neighbors and acquaintances. I will only exhort you to remember, madam, that there is nothing dishonorable in honest, laborious, physical industry—the working with one’s hands. The fact that my beloved Jessie toiled to provide for the comfort of her sick and indigent parents, and discharged with her own noble efforts all their pecuniary obligations, only renders her more admirable in my estimation, and worthier to receive the inheritance I feel honored to bestow upon her. Hereafter she will be recognized as my own daughter.” Mrs. Varley was perfectly subdued. The character of the lady she had come armed to annihilate, stood out sublimely before her, in contrast with her own conscious duplicity and assumption—humbled and silenced she rose to go, with very much the feeling of an arrogant general vanquished and routed, and forced into a disgraceful and disordered retreat.