“What!” exclaimed Mrs. Savage, starting up from her elegant apathy, her face flaming with passion, her plump hand clenched, “my son—my son, Horace Savage, visiting Anna Burns! Miss Halstead, you are crazy with jealousy; stung to death in your vanity, to say such things of him. Why, he is proud as I am, honest as his father. I do not believe this!” Eliza Halstead was rather pleased with this outbreak. She saw in it a sure termination of the attachment which, in her belief, certainly existed. That which she had failed to do, that haughty woman would accomplish, she felt certain. “You are severe, unkind, to doubt me so,” was her pathetic rejoinder. “I have seen them together in the street.” “That is nothing, of course; he would speak to her or any other person, poor and dependent. A Savage is too proud for arrogance. If that is all the proof you have, permit me to say that your absurd jealousy has outrun all common sense.” “Madam!” exclaimed Miss Eliza—and the angry red outflamed the permanent color on her cheek—“Madam, I have seen him enter the low house where she lives, not once, but half a dozen times. I have seen him walking, block after block, with her down such streets as you never entered in your life.” “But you were there, it seems.” “A woman’s heart will take her anywhere when she suspects the object of her love.” “Miss Halstead—but it is useless arguing with you, utterly useless; there is no fool like an old fool!” This very trite adage was muttered under the lady’s breath; but Miss Eliza had sharp ears, and caught the word fool. “What did you say, madam?” she demanded, sharply. “Oh, nothing! only that I was an old fool, to believe any thing alleged against my son.” “Believe what you like, think what you like,” answered the spinster, who was not so easily deceived; “I have done my duty—a painful, sad duty. All that I ask of you, his mother, is silence—secrecy; profound secrecy as to my part in the affair. Owing all loyalty to him, I have come here to betray him to his own mother. It breaks my heart; do not, I pray you, madam, add one pang to those which rend it now. Remember the relations which may one day unite us, and be faithful to the trust I have reposed in you.” Mrs. Savage was by this time pacing up and down her sumptuous sitting-room, trampling upon the flowers in its map-like carpet as a tigress treads upon the grass of its jungle. She was dreadfully annoyed; all the pride and unbounded affection which she had lavished on her son, rose in revolt against the tidings Miss Eliza had brought her. Now that her suspicions were aroused, she remembered many little circumstances calculated to confirm Miss Eliza’s statement. As this belief grew strong upon her, the color left her face, and she sat down in her chair, stern and cold, doubting, unbelieving. “You are sure of this thing?” she said, speaking in a slow, still voice. “This is no phantasy of a jealous imagination?”