When Lucy appeared, she raised her head, glanced at her, for an instant, and then resumed her reading. "Do not turn away from me," said Lucy, advancing, "nay, you dare not, for you have used me ill. It is I, not you, who should be angry." Millie looked at her in haughty surprise; but the speech had had its effect--she was roused. "I injure you," she said, contemptuously, "I may have suffered the moth to take its wanton flight after one attempt to warn it; but I certainly did not hold the fire to its wings." "But if you would not stretch out your hand to save that moth when you could, you have done wrong. You are infinitely more clever than I am; but a child knows right from wrong--and I tell you that you were wrong--yes, very, very wrong." They say a child's questions can pose the learned--certainly the words of a dissipated but repentant girl puzzled the intellectual Millie, who had encircled herself with the stern barriers of injured virtue, and had been contented. "Yes, you were wrong," repeated Lucy, gathering strength and courage as she spoke, "for a few thoughtless, wilful words of mine, for the sake of your own rash vow to expose me to the ridicule, which none dread more than yourself, you have made me the laughing stock of an idle town--you have brought scandal on the head of him you have vowed to honor--and you have perilled my happiness, and my honor, as a woman ought not to peril that of her worst enemy, much less one whom she once called friend." "I?" said Millie. "Yes; when you refused to speak the one word which would have opened my eyes, you did all this. And yet you dare to look upon me as upon some foul thing which your delicate eyes must turn from with disgust and loathing--but it shall not be. I dare you to speak your thoughts. I tell you, that wild butterfly of the ball-room, as I have been--the plaything of an hour--I dare to stand before you, and to say that I would hide my face for shame, had I exposed another, body and soul, as you have exposed me." As she stood, with the glow of indignation on her face, a film seemed to fall from Millie's eyes, and, laying her head upon the table, she groaned aloud. Lucy's first impulse was to rush to her, but she remembered the look of anguish which Beauclerc shewed when they parted, and she restrained herself, remaining impatiently watching the large tears which found their way through her thin fingers. "I have wronged you, Lucy," said Millie, sobbing, as she raised her head, and glanced timidly at her; "forgive me." "Sacred things," returned her companion, "seem profaned by such thoughtless lips as mine, but I have heard that there is a law, and no earthly one, which says, 'forgive, or never be forgiven.'" "Forgive me, then," said Millie. "Oh, you do not know how I loved, and what I suffered--how my spirits have been wrung and agonised--how, day after day, have I sat here and thought, till, in the anguish of my heart, I believed my senses had forsaken me."