"To me?--Pray, what is it? To judge by the place you have chosen for your confessional, it should be something rather solemn and majestical." "Do you remember that I left you on the shrubbery-seat this morning fast asleep?" "Oh! perfectly.--You mean, then, to confess that the doing so was unwatchful and unfriendly: and, indeed, I think it was. How did you know but I might be awakened by some venomous reptile that should come to sting me?" "Believe me, I thought the place secure from interruption of every kind. But I had reason to think afterwards that it did not prove so." "What do you mean, Miss Torrington?" replied Henrietta, in an accent of some asperity. "I presume you did not creep away for the purpose of spying at me from a distance?" "Oh no!--You cannot, I am sure, suspect me of wishing to spy at you at all. And yet things have so fallen out, that when I tell you all, you must suspect me of it--unless you believe me, as I trust you do, incapable of such an action." "Pray do not speak in riddles," said Henrietta impatiently. "What is it you have got to confess to me? Tell me at once, Miss Torrington." "You really do not encourage me to be very frank with you, for you seem angry already. But the truth is, Miss Cartwright, that I did most unintentionally overhear your conversation with Mr. Hetherington." "The whole of it?--Did you hear the whole of it, Rosalind?" "Not quite. The gentleman appeared to be in the midst of his declaration when my unwilling ears became his confidants." "And then you listened to the end?" "I did." A deathlike silence followed this avowal, which was at last broken by Henrietta, who said in a low whisper, "Then at last you know me!" "Oh! do not say so;--do not say that the fearful words that I heard were spoken in earnest!--Do not say that;--I cannot bear to hear it!" "Poor girl!--poor Rosalind!" said Henrietta, in a voice of the deepest melancholy. "I have always wished to spare you this--I have always wished to spare myself the pain of reading abhorrence in the eyes of one that I do believe I could have loved, had not my heart been dead." "But if you feel thus, Henrietta,--if indeed you know that such words as I heard you utter must raise abhorrence,--it is because that you yourself must hate them. I know you are unhappy--I know that your nature scorns the faults that are but too conspicuous in your father; but is it not beneath a mind of such power as yours to think there is no God in heaven, because one weak and wicked man has worshipped him amiss?" "He worship!--Trust me, Rosalind, had I been the child of a Persian, and seen him, in spirit and in truth, worshipping the broad sun as it looked down from heaven upon earth, making its fragrant dews rise up to him in incense, I should not have been the wretched thing I am,--for I should have worshipped too."