"My God!" cried Zillah; "what are you saying? Do you not know, Hilda, that every word that you speak is a stab? What do you mean? Do you dare to talk as if my papa has shut the mouth of an injured friend by a payment of money? Do you mean me to think that, after dishonoring his friend, he has sought to efface the dishonor by gold? My God! you will drive me mad. You make my papa, and Lord Chetwynde also, sink down into fathomless depths of infamy." "You torture my words into a meaning different from what I intended," said Hilda, quietly. "I merely meant to show you that Lord Chetwynde's obligations to General Pomeroy were so vast that he ought not even to suspect him, no matter how strong the proof." Zillah waved her hands with a gesture of despair. "No matter how strong the proof!" she repeated. "Ah! There it is again. You quietly assume my papa's guilt in every word. You have read those papers, and have believed every word." "You are very unkind, Zillah. I was doing my best to comfort you." "Comfort!" cried Zillah, in indescribable tones. "Ah, my darling, do not be cross," said Hilda, twining her arms around Zillah's neck. "You know I loved your papa only less than you did. He was a father to me. What can I say? You yourself were troubled by those papers. So was I. And that is all I will say. I will not speak of them again." And here Hilda stopped, and went about the room to attend to her duties as nurse. Zillah stood, with her mind full of strange, conflicting feelings. The hints which Hilda had given sank deep into her soul. What did they mean? Their frightful meaning stood revealed full before her in all its abhorrent reality. Reviewing those papers by the light of Hilda's dark interpretation, she saw what they involved. This, then, was the cause of her marriage. Her father had tried to atone for the past. He had made Lord Chetwynde rich to pay for the dishonor that he had suffered. He had stolen away the wife, and given a daughter in her place. She, then, had been the medium of this frightful attempt at readjustment, this atonement for wrongs that could never be atoned for. Hilda's meaning made this the only conceivable cause for that premature engagement, that hurried marriage by the death-bed. And could there be any other reason? Did it not look like the act of a remorseful sinner, anxious to finish his expiation, and make amends for crime before meeting his Judge in the other world to which he was hastening? The General had offered up every thing to expiate his crime--he had given his fortune--he had sacrificed his daughter. What other cause could possibly have moved him to enforce the hideous mockery of that ghastly, that unparalleled marriage?