“She!” cried the baroness. “She has decided upon nothing. Perhaps I have been led too readily to leap at a conclusion. She has made no accusation against you, poor thing; but I confess that I thought she was striving to defend you. She was terribly agitated by the chance sight she caught of you in the street last night. She has been weeping ever since. She gave me your letters with some broken words, which perhaps I may have misconstrued. If I have done you wrong, I beg your pardon. If I have done you wrong, I beg your forgiveness with all my heart. But surely, Captain Fyffe, you do not in cold blood propose to one woman that she shall throw another on the world, that she should cast her, however frail she may have been, into new temptations. You must let me tell you,” she hurried on, raising her hand against me to arrest any interruption I might have been disposed to make--“you must let me tell you that I exercise some little forbearance in taking this tone at all. No slander has ever touched my reputation, and I do not intend that it shall smirch it now. I have but to say I have been deceived to establish myself in the sight of all who know me. Tell me, sir, if you have ever heard a whisper against my honor. Did ever man or woman breathe a word in your hearing with respect to me which might not have been spoken of a sister of your own?” The plain truth was that I knew nobody but Bru-now who had any acquaintance with the little lady's antecedents. He had certainly spoken of her often in terms which I should have been very sorry to have heard applied to a sister of mine if I had been so fortunate as to own one. But, then, Brunow was a man about town, and a braggart at the same time, and I had attached no more importance to his talk than to the irresponsible babble of a baby. It was not my business to repeat Brunow's stupid follies, and I kept silent. She, however, was not disposed to let me off that way, but pressed me for an answer. “Madame,” I was forced to say, “I am not so impertinent as to call your reputation into question for an instant. I will not be so insolent as to sit in judgment upon so delicate a question for a moment. I have said all I had to say, and can see no reason for recalling any part of it.” I bowed, and made a movement to retire, but she flashed between me and the door, and faced me with supplicating hands.