"To judicial process only: of that be assured. I have little doubt that, when I am placed in full possession of all the facts of the case, I shall be quite able to justify my conduct." He did not reply, and I continued: "If you choose to wait here till I have heard Edith's statement, I will at once frankly acquaint you with my final determination." "Be it so: and please to recollect, sir, that you have to deal with a man not easily baffled or entrapped by legal subtlety or cunning." I reascended to the drawing-room; and finding Edith--thanks to the ministrations, medicinal and oral, of my bustling and indignant lady--much calmer, and thoroughly satisfied that nobody could or should wrest her from us, begged her to relate unreservedly the cause or causes which had led to her present position. She falteringly complied; and I listened with throbbing pulse and burning cheeks to the sad story of her wedded wretchedness, dating from within two or three months of the marriage; and finally consummated by a disclosure that, if provable, might consign Harlowe to the hulks. The tears, the agony, the despair of the unhappy lady, excited in me a savageness of feeling, an eager thirst for vengeance, which I had believed foreign to my nature. Edith divined my thoughts, and taking my hand, said, "Never, sir, never will I appear against him: the father of my little Helen shall never be publicly accused by me." "You err, Edith," I rejoined; "it is a positive duty to bring so consummate a villain to justice. He has evidently calculated on your gentleness of disposition, and must be disappointed." I soon, however, found it was impossible to shake her resolution on this point; and I returned with a heart full of grief and bitterness to Mr. Harlowe. "You will oblige me, sir," I exclaimed as I entered the room, "by leaving this house immediately: I would hold no further converse with so vile a person." "How! Do you know to whom you presume to speak in this manner?" "Perfectly. You are one Harlowe, who, after a few months' residence with a beautiful and amiable girl, had extinguished the passion which induced him to offer her marriage, showered on her every species of insult and indignity of which a cowardly and malignant nature is capable; and who, finding that did not kill her, at length consummated, or revealed, I do not yet know which term is most applicable, his utter baseness by causing her to be informed that his first wife was still living." "Upon my honor, sir, I believed, when I married Miss Willoughby, that I was a widower." "Your _honor!_ But except to prove that I _do_ thoroughly know and appreciate the person I am addressing, I will not bandy words with you. After that terrible disclosure--if, indeed, it be a disclosure, not an invention--Ah, you start at that" "At your insolence, sir; not at your senseless surmises."