Dan was half mad. He thought he detected contempt in the way she pronounced the word “honor.” He thought some one had been “poisoning her mind” against him—by the truth in his case—and scarcely knowing what he was saying, he blurted out this fear—thus, by a stroke of poetic justice, revealing what the prudent Mrs. Forest had taken such infinite pains to conceal. “Indeed!” exclaimed Miss Marston, coldly. “I never dreamed that, young as you are, you could be so old in iniquity. I should much like to be able to respect you for the sake of your estimable family; but if this is so, and I see the truth of it in your face, let me give you a word of advice: I am some years older than you are, and I think I know human nature well enough to assure you that you will never win the love of any true woman while basely deserting another, whose happiness”—and she added in a low, withering tone, as she turned to leave the room—“and whose honor you have placed in your hands.” The door closed behind her, and Dan, in speaking of his sensations years after, remarked that you could have “knocked him down with a feather.” CHAPTER XVI. THE VISIT OF THE DELANOS. Dr. Delano winced a little at the scandals circulating in the village, for he heard the name of his betrothed constantly coupled with that of the “fallen” Susie Dykes. Once he expressed a kind of gentle remonstrance that she should visit Susie so often, but she replied with such frank confidence, as if he could not possibly look at the matter except as one of the very highest and best of earth’s creatures, that he felt little in his own eyes, and dropped the subject. Still, he was a good deal disturbed when his father and the stately Miss Charlotte Delano appeared on the scene, coming from the centre of the _élite_ of Beacon Hill, in Boston. While in Oakdale they were the guests of the Kendricks, old friends of the Delanos, and the richest people in the county. He knew that the Kendrick girls had cut Clara’s acquaintance from the beginning of these scandals. One of these, Louise Kendrick, had been Clara’s most intimate friend since their girlhood, when they used to play with the skeleton in the doctor’s garret. Clara herself was really distressed over her friend’s disaffection, and Mrs. Forest regarded it almost as a calamity, and tortured Clara about it in season and out of season. “I’m sure you might have expected it,” she would say, in an injured tone. “Girls, who have a proper regard for their reputation, shrink instinctively from those who have not.” These speeches roused Clara one day, and she flashed defiance in a very shocking way. “I begin to hate the very word reputation,” she said. “I wouldn’t have it at the cost of being mean and heartless, like Louise Kendrick.” Mrs. Forest was amazed, and asked her daughter what Dr. Delano would say if he could hear her utter such sentiments. The answer was very unexpected, and silenced Mrs.