"Your addressing me as Mr O'Donahue, Miss Phillips, has pointed out to me the impropriety I have been guilty of in making use of your Christian name. I thought that that confidence which you placed in me when, as a mere boy, I told you exactly what I now repeat, that the secret was not my own, would not have been now so cruelly withdrawn. I have never varied in my tale, and I can honestly say that I have never felt degraded when I have admitted that I have a mystery connected with me; nay, if it should please Heaven that I have the option given me to suffer in my own person, or reveal the secret in question, I trust that I shall submit to my fate with constancy, and be supported in my misfortune by the conviction of my innocence. I feel that I was not wrong in the communication that I made to you yesterday morning that I must leave this place. I came here because you were living here--you to whom I felt so devoted for your kindness and sympathy when I was poor and friendless; now that I am otherwise, you are pleased to withdraw not only your good will, but your confidence in me; and as the spell is broken which has drawn me to this spot, I repeat, that as soon as I can, with justice to my patrons, I shall withdraw myself from your presence." Our hero's voice faltered before he had finished speaking; and then turning away slowly, without looking up, he quitted the room. CHAPTER FORTY. IN WHICH OUR HERO TRIES CHANGE OF AIR. The reader will observe that there has been a little altercation at the end of the last chapter. Emma Phillips was guilty of letting drop a received truism, or rather a metaphor, which offended our hero. "Did innocence and mystery ever walk hand in hand?" If Emma had put that question to us, we, from our knowledge of the world, should have replied, "Yes, very often, my dear Miss Phillips." But Emma was wrong, not only in her metaphor, but in the time of her making it. Why did she do so? Ah! that is a puzzling question to answer; we can only say, at our imminent risk, when this narrative shall be perused by the other sex, that we have made the discovery that women are not perfect; that the very best of the sex are full of contradiction, and that Emma was a woman. That women very often are more endowed than the generality of men we are ready to admit; and their cause has been taken up by Lady Morgan, Mrs Jamieson, and many others who can write much better than we can. When we say their cause, we mean the right of equality they would claim with our sex and not subjection to it. Reading my Lady Morgan the other day, which, next to conversing with her, is one of the greatest treats we know of we began to speculate upon what were the causes which had subjected woman to man; in other words, how was it that man had got the upper hand, and kept it? That women's minds were not inferior to men's we were forced to admit; that their aptitude for cultivation is often greater, was not to be denied.