"Have I, can I have been mistaken? Has my own wary judgment in general, deceived me this once? I thought," he almost uttered these last words to himself, "no one could cheat my watchfulness now." "Mr. Tremenhere," exclaimed she in much embarrassment, yet anxious to cast from her a garment so hateful as the one which should cloak her as Burton's wife in his or any eyes, "I may be speaking boldly for a girl, and to you, a stranger too, but I would not have any one suppose, much less you, an injured man, that I can ever become your cousin's wife. Mr. Skaife, pray assure Mr. Tremenhere you did not allude to me!" "Indeed," said Skaife, much puzzled by his own awkwardness, "I had forgotten all present; I will explain my meaning to you," and he turned to Miles. "Oh!" answered this man again, reassured in confidence, and smiling his own peculiar smile on Minnie. "I ill deserve this kindness, this haste to soothe my wounds. Believe me, they are deep and cankering when I think of Burton, not for myself, but another. You have been so Christian in kindness to poor Mary, that I could not bear, Miss Dalzell, to associate any one I respected in even my thoughts with that traitor. Thought," he continued, musingly, "is a gift of the soul; you will inhabit mine, linked with that unfortunate girl, whom I much love." "Am I to understand," asked Skaife aside to him in surprise, "that you know all?" "All?" and the other stared, astonished at the question to himself. "Could any know it better? what else has again brought me to this place? what drove me from it?" "Then, indeed, you are to be pitied, Mr. Tremenhere--deeply pitied; but I feared something of this, from your emotion in the humble cottage we have quitted."