You say you remember me not--but if I tell you how often you refused to perform in secret the office which was required of you--how much you urged that it was against your canonical rules--if I name the argument to which you yielded--and remind you of your purpose, to acknowledge your transgression to your brethren in the church courts, to plead your excuse, and submit to their censure, which you said could not be a light one--you will be then aware, that, in the voice of the miserable pauper, you hear the words of the once artful, gay, and specious Hannah Irwin." "I allow it--I allow it!" said Mr.Cargill; "I admit the tokens, and believe you to be indeed her whose name you assume." "Then one painful step is over," said she; "for I would ere now have lightened my conscience by confession, saving for the cursed pride of spirit, which was ashamed of poverty, though it had not shrunk from guilt .-- Well--In these arguments, which were urged to you by a youth best known to you by the name of Francis Tyrrel, though more properly entitled to that of Valentine Bulmer, we practised on you a base and gross deception .-- Did you not hear some one sigh ?--I hope there is no one in the room--I trust I shall die when my confession is signed and sealed, without my name being dragged through the public--I hope ye bring not in your menials to gaze on my abject misery--I cannot brook that." She paused and listened; for the ear, usually deafened by pain, is sometimes, on the contrary, rendered morbidly acute.

Mr.Cargill assured her, there was no one present but himself.

"But, O, most unhappy woman!" he said, "what does your introduction prepare me to expect!" "Your expectation, be it ever so ominous, shall be fully satisfied .-- I was the guilty confidant of the false Francis Tyrrel .-- Clara loved the true one .-- When the fatal ceremony passed, the bride and the clergyman were deceived alike--and I was the wretch--the fiend--who, aiding another yet blacker, if blacker could be--mainly helped to accomplish this cureless misery!" "Wretch!" exclaimed the clergyman, "and had you not then done enough ?--Why did you expose the betrothed of one brother to become the wife of another ?" "I acted," said the sick woman, "only as Bulmer instructed me; but I had to do with a master of the game.

He contrived, by his agent Solmes, to match me with a husband imposed on me by his devices as a man of fortune!--a wretch, who maltreated me--plundered me--sold me .-- Oh! if fiends laugh, as I have heard they can, what a jubilee of scorn will there be, when Bulmer and I enter their place of torture!--Hark!--I am sure of it--some one draws breath, as if shuddering!" "You will distract yourself if you give way to these fancies.

Be calm--speak on--but, oh! at last, and for once, speak the truth!" "I will, for it will best gratify my hatred against him, who, having first robbed me of my virtue, made me a sport and a plunder to the basest of the species.