I remember well the last day you were kind to me. You left me in the morning with smiles; you returned home long after midnight a changed man. I, also, was changed when you returned. I have other cause to remember the day; for in the evening my cousin Ralph came to see me, and stayed with me until nearly eleven o'clock. You had sent me a note saying that you were detained at your office by important business. I read the note to my cousin, and he laughed at it, and said that you had good cause for your absence. His words conveyed a strange meaning to my ears, and I asked for an explanation. He gave it to me; and I learnt, to my horror, that you were in the habit of visiting another woman--a stranger in the town. Before I had recovered from the shock, I received another. My cousin Ralph, in a mad moment, proved himself to be what I had not hitherto suspected--a vile bad man. He told me, in passionate terms, that he loved me, and that he had loved me from boyhood; that it had been the dream of his life that we should be married, and that, but for you and your money, his life might have been a life of happiness. I listened in dismay and astonishment; I knew that he had an affection for me, but I thought it was such an affection as one cousin might innocently have entertained for another. I was so overwhelmed by this discovery, and by his accusations against you, that I had no power to stay his words. He misinterpreted my silence, and proceeded in wilder terms to propose flight to me. I tried to answer him, but my grief, and my terror lest you should return while he was in the house--for he was at my feet and refused to stir--made me weak. I implored him for my sake and for his own to leave me; and presently, when I grew stronger, I addressed him in words which it was impossible for him to misunderstand. It flashed upon me then that he had invented the story he had told me about you, and I taunted him with it. He answered me to the effect that he would prove it true before many days were over, and that then I might possibly listen to him more favourably. He left me; and your own conduct towards me from that day, during the short time we were together, was almost a sufficient proof. You would have judged upon that evidence; I was not content with it. I soon tasted the bitterness that lay in knowledge. A clerk in your office, who had for a purpose of his own made himself acquainted with the history of this woman--probably to use against you in some way--and whom you had employed to convey money and letters to her at different times, told me more than I wanted to know. On the day that you had the public quarrel with my cousin Ralph--I heard of it soon afterwards, for it became matter of common talk--I discovered that this woman came from a town in which you had formerly resided--that you knew her then--and that her history was a shameful one. Then there came to me the words that had passed between us upon your first visit to my father's house,