“And so do I,” answered Savage, with deep feeling. “It was kindly meant. But I will bid you good-day, madam. If I should ever come here again, pray believe that it is with no unworthy motive. I cannot permit you to think otherwise in common self-respect.” “Well, then, don’t come again, and I’ll believe you. In fact, I do now. There’s a difference between gentlemen and gentlemen. I only wish the other chap had a face that could turn red and white like yours. The long and the short of it is, I wish he was straight out of my house; that poor child don’t seem like the same cretur since he came here.” Savage did not stay to ask in what this change consisted, the subject had become altogether too painful; so, with a bend of his head, he went out. One moment he paused upon the staircase; his heart turned with passionate longing toward that lonely upper room. Even in her unworthiness, he yearned to look upon Anna’s face once more; to hear her sweet voice proclaim the innocence he never could believe in again. But he thought of Ward, the gambler and convenient toady, whom so many men used in his scoundrelism, and despised, as they used him, with a sensation of such intense loathing, that it turned his very compassion away from the young creature he had loved with such self-sacrificing truth. “Had it been any one else,” he muttered through his shut teeth, “I could have borne it better; but this paltry wretch, this miserable hound! Great heavens! and she, so gentle, so exquisitely pure! It is beyond belief. Never till now did I believe in the utter duplicity of the sex. Poor girl! Poor, wrecked girl! Could she have known how I loved her?” With these thoughts, which broke in half-formed words against his shut teeth, the young man went down stairs, and into the poverty-stricken neighborhood beyond, feeling, for the first time, in all its force, how squalid and offensive it was. Scarcely had his foot touched the pavement, when he saw Anna Burns coming down the side-walk with a small parcel in her hand. Her face lighted up as she saw him, her cheeks dimpled, and a warm love-glow came into her eyes. Savage stood motionless, looking at her with his stern eyes on fire, and his lips set. She did not see the expression of his face, for, after the first glad recognition, her eyelids had drooped in shame at her own eager joy, and she came up to him shrinking and covered with blushes—came up and held out her hand; for was he not her declared lover, this brave, handsome young fellow, whom any lady of the land would have gloried in.