He was perfectly cool, but his face showed the effort it was to be so, while his black eyes rolled restlessly from one object to another, and he was about to speak again when Alice came tripping down the stairs, and pausing at the parlor door, looked in. “Anna Richards!” she exclaimed, but uttered no other sound for the terror of something terrible, which kept her silent. It was no ordinary matter which had brought that group together, and she stood looking from one to the other, until the convict said, “Young lady, you cannot be the bride, but will you call her, tell her she is wanted.” Alice never knew what she said to ’Lina. She was only conscious of following her down the stairs and into that dreadful room. Sullivan was watching for her, and the muscles about his mouth twitched convulsively, while a shadow of mingled pity and tenderness swept over his features as his eye fell on the girlish figure behind her, ’Lina, with the orange blossoms in her hair—’Lina almost ready for the bridal! For an instant the convict regarded her intently, and there was something in his glance which brought Hugh at once to ’Lina, where, with his arm upon her chair, he stood as if he would protect her. Noble Hugh! ’Lina never knew one-half how good and generous he was until just as she was losing him. Dr. Richards was restored by this time, and looked on those around him in utter astonishment; on Mrs. Worthington crouched in the farthest corner, her face as white as ashes, and her eyes riveted upon the figure of the man standing in the center of the room; on ’Lina, terrified at what she saw; on Anna, more perplexed, more astonished than himself, and on Hugh, towering up so commandingly above the whole, and demanding of the convict the explanation which he had come to make. There was a moment’s hesitancy, and his face flushed and paled alternately ere the convict could summon courage to begin. “Take this seat, sir, you need it,” Hugh said, bringing him a chair and then resuming his watch over ’Lina, who involuntarily leaned her throbbing head upon his arm, and with the others listened to that strange tale of sin. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE CONVICT’S STORY. “It is not an easy task to confess how bad one has been,” the stranger said, “and once no power could have tempted me to do it; but several years of prison life have taught me some wholesome lessons, and I am not the same man I was when I met you, Eliza, (bowing to Mrs. Worthington) and won your hand if not your heart. But previous to that time there was a passage of my life which I must now repeat. At my boarding-house in New York there was a young girl, a chamber-maid, whom I deceived with promises of marriage and then deserted, just when she needed me the most. I had found new prey, was on the eve of marriage with Mrs. Eliza Worthington. I—” The story was interrupted at this point by a cry from ’Lina, who moaned,