"I have been brought up in a very different home from yours--and when you think of me, you must give me all the excuses my circumstances claim. I feel I might have been happier in a different life, yet, as it is, I have been happy enough. When I first came here, I thought I never could live in so dull a place, though I appeared delighted with it, because I feared to offend you; but now I dread nothing so much as leaving, and going back to Bath. Mamma talks a great deal of being very fond of us--but she despairs of getting so many girls married, and would give her right hand to get rid of us in a respectable manner. Very little is talked of when we are alone, but the chances of this or that young man's coming forward. I confess, with shame, that no one has talked on this subject, with more zeal than I have done--and I boldly determined to do my very best to get married. You will call this all very unwomanly, and so I acknowledge now, but anything seemed preferable to being an old maid. So far, you see, Arthur Clair was right; when I first saw him--marriage being at all times uppermost in my thoughts--I wished to make a conquest of him, if possible. You see how far I succeeded--even you were deceived, and thought him sincere, while, it appears, he was only trifling with me, as I deserved. I wrote home glowing accounts to Bath--and by this time, it is whispered half over the town, in all the coteries where mamma visits--and I shall now have to go back to disappoint them, and be laughed at myself; but this would be nothing, if I could go back, as light-hearted as I came here. Arthur Clair is wrong in supposing I have no heart--but I do not love him less for despising the character he supposes me to be. It was very cruel of him to act as he did--but yet I must have appeared to him a sad trifler, and worse than that, for, while I really loved you more than I do any other girl I know, I was, when with him, perpetually turning you into ridicule to prevent his admiring you. You, too, must hate and despise me; but I am tired of deceit, and will have nothing more to do with it." Mabel's quick judgment foresaw that her cousin's repentance was probably as light, as her confession of deceit was easy--but she knew, at the same time, that she had no right to take this for granted, and that her only duty was to catch at even the lightest spark of virtue, and use her utmost power to kindle it into a bright and lasting flame. Sorrow was around her in every shape, destitution and dependence were before her, yet, no grief of her own, could prevent her turning a willing ear to the complaints, which, her truly womanly nature told her, arose from that suffering which is perhaps the hardest a woman can feel. With extreme gentleness she offered comfort, mingled with the censure, she could not in sincerity withhold, and Lucy listened with surprise to advice unmingled with any taunt or reproach.