"But surely, Emily," I cried, "you do not hesitate now which engagement is to be kept--the one obtained by fraud and falsehood, or the prior one, sealed by affection and esteem. You do not, you cannot hesitate, or you are not my Emily--not the Emily I left!" "I am--I am your Emily," she replied, casting herself again upon my bosom, "and I do not hesitate, James; but indeed you do not know all, and I am afraid that I must not tell you all; but I will go on my knees to my father to beseech him to tell you the whole, and if he loves me as he says, to break all ties with that wretched man." "Wretched indeed!" I cried; "but _I_ will find a means to break them, Emily, and in the mean time promise me--" But at that moment there was a furious knock at the street-door. "It is he! It is he!" cried Emily, starting up as pale as death, "I cannot, I will not see him any more! But, oh! James, go home quick, for my father will be with you soon, and I would not have you miss him for the world." I tried to detain her for one word more, but there was the sound of a hasty step running up stairs, and darting from me, she rushed out of the room. I followed to the door, and just caught a sight of her retreating figure as at the top of the great staircase she turned to enter her own room. Coming up the flight of steps below me, however, was an object which called all my thoughts into another direction. It was Alfred Wild himself, and never shall I forget the expression of his countenance as our eyes met. Rage, jealousy, disappointment, and fiendish malice, were all as plainly to be read there, as the thunder can be seen in the lurid cloud, even before it bursts: but feelings as bitter were in my heart, and as he came rapidly up the staircase I strode forward to meet him. We met at the top of the staircase. "What do you do here?" I cried. "How dare you ever to set your foot again in a house that you have made miserable by your falsehood and your baseness?" "Beggarly puppy!" he began to reply; but I gave him no time to proceed further; for catching him by the collar and the back, with the momentary strength of overpowering indignation, I cast him from the top of the stairs to the bottom; and then following him, as he rose bewildered with his rapid descent, I spurned him with my foot into the hall. He did not offer to strike me again, but snatching his hat from the hands of one of the servants who had picked it up as he rolled down stairs, he shook his clenched fist at me, with his teeth set fast, and darting through the open door, sprang into his curricle and drove away.