"How very differently," thought I, "her friend the captain would have conducted himself.

His quiet and gentlemanly manner would have done fully as much to wipe out any insult on his honor as I could do, and after all, would neither have disturbed the harmony of a dinner-table, nor made himself, as I shuddered to think I had, a subject of rebuke, if not of ridicule." These harassing, torturing reflections continued to press on me, and I paced the room with my hands clasped and the perspiration upon my brow.

"One thing is certain,--I can never see her again," thought I; "this disgraceful business must, in some shape or other, become known to her, and all I have been saying these last three days rise up in judgment against this one act, and stamp me an impostor! I that decried--nay, derided--our false notion of honor.

Would that Considine were come! What can keep him now ?" I walked to the door; a boy belonging to the house was walking the roan before the door.

"What had, then, become of Pat ?" I inquired; but no one could tell.