"And what if I did? Would it be so very strange? Youth admires youth, Mr. Orcutt, and Mr. Hildreth is very handsome and very unfortunate. Do not oblige me to say more." Mr. Orcutt, across whose face a dozen different emotions had flitted during the utterance of these few words, drew back till half the distance of the room lay between them. "Nor do I wish to hear any more," he rejoined, slowly. "You have said enough, quite enough. I understand now all the past--all your terrors and all your secret doubts and unaccountable behavior. The man you loved was in danger, and you did not know how to manage his release. Well, well, I am sorry for you, Imogene. I wish I could help you. I love you passionately, and would make you my wife in face of your affection for this man if I could do for you what you request. But it is impossible. Never during the whole course of my career has a blot rested upon my integrity as a lawyer. I am known as an honest man, and honest will I remain known to the last. Besides, I could do nothing to effect his enlargement if I tried. Nothing but the plainest proof that he is innocent, or that another man is guilty, would avail now to release him from the suspicion which his own admissions have aroused." "Then there is no hope?" was her slow and despairing reply. "None at present, Imogene," was his stern, almost as despairing, answer. As Mr. Orcutt sat over his lonely hearth that evening, a servant brought to him the following letter: DEAR FRIEND,--It is not fit that I should remain any longer under your roof. I have a duty before me which separates me forever from the friendship and protection of honorable men and women. No home but such as I can provide for myself by the work of my own hands shall henceforth shelter the disgraced head of Imogene Dare. Her fate, whatever it may prove to be, she bears alone, and you, who have been so kind, shall never suffer from any association with one whose name must henceforth become the sport of the crowd, if not the execration of the virtuous. If your generous heart rebels at this, choke it relentlessly down. I shall be already gone when you read these lines, and nothing you could do or say would make me come back. Good-by, and may Heaven grant you forgetfulness of one whose only return to your benefactions has been to make you suffer almost as much as she suffers herself. As Mr. Orcutt read these last lines, District Attorney Ferris was unsealing the anonymous missive which has already been laid before my readers. XXI. HEART'S MARTYRDOM. Oh that a man might know The end of this day's business, ere it come; But it sufficeth that the day will end, And then the end is known!--JULIUS CAESAR.