"Oh! Miss Hester, think upon my meaning," cried Alice. "I thought I knew his look, his step, his voice, from the first time he came under this roof. I pondered and pondered in my mind if it could be him; but he never told me that I should know. You were as like to know as I was, dear--you had seen him all the same; and it was not my part to speak, or I thought so, Miss Hester. Then the night he spoke to you first, he brought the roses here, and said to me, 'Do you think she would like them, Alice?' and in my heart I knew where they came from; but never a word was spoken of them by either him or me. On your wedding-day I got more again, by a servant's hand. I never doubted they came from Cottiswoode, nor that he sent them: but, dear, he never told me, and I had no right to know. You were willing to marry him, Miss Hester, you were bound up in one another; was I to presume that I knew more than you did, darling! and what was it I knew? nothing at all, dear, but the thought in my heart--oh! Miss Hester, you're all I have in the world--don't turn away from Alice--don't think I've deceived you, I'm desolate without you." "_I_ am quite desolate, I have no one in the world to trust to," said I. "Oh! don't say it--don't say it!" cried Alice, "he's been led into a snare once, Miss Hester, but truth is in his heart!" "It is I who have been led into a snare," said I, bitterly, "he has wrecked all my expectations--he has plunged me out of happiness into misery; but that is not all, he has placed me so that I must either yield and be satisfied like a weak fool, or if I resist be known as a passionate ill-tempered woman, who makes him miserable. I see all that is before me. I am doomed like my father. My own life is robbed of every comfort, and the blame of making him unhappy will be added to me--oh, I see it all! I will be called a termagant, a household plague, a scorn to women. It is not enough that my life is wretched--my good name must go from me too." "Oh! Miss Hester, not by his will," cried Alice. As she spoke, a change came upon me. The pride of a wife came to my mind. I could blame him myself--but I could hear no one else blame him--I could not admit a third person to our domestic discord. My quarrel with Alice was for her own fault, and not for his. My bitterness against Mr. Osborne was because he had deceived me, and not because Edgar Southcote had. No one but himself had any right to speak of his error to me. "I am not speaking of my husband," I said coldly; "what is between us can only be settled by ourselves; no one can interfere between him and me. I speak only of circumstances of my unfortunate and unhappy position; that is all I refer to."