bid Mills treat the affair lightly. Public men are exposed, you know, to assaults from crackbrained enthusiasts; or stay--I once was a lawyer, and" (continued Darrell, whose irony had become so integral an attribute of his mind as to be proof against all trial) "there are men so out of their wits as to fancy a lawyer has ruined them! Lionel, tell poor Dick Fairthorn to come to me." When the musician entered, Darrell whispered to him: "Go back to your room--open your casement--step out on to the parapet--you will see something white; it is a scrap of paper wrapped round my old armorial seal. Bring it to me just as it is, Dick. That poor young Lionel, we must keep him here a day or two; mind, no prickles for him, Dick."
CHAPTER III.
ARABELLA CRANE VERSUS GUY DARRELL; OR, WOMAN VERSUS LAWYER. IN THE COURTS, LAWYER WOULD WIN; BUT IN A PRIVATE PARLOUR, FOOT TO FOOT, AND TONGUE TO TONGUE, LAWYER HAS NOT A CHANCE.
Arabella Crane entered the room: Darrell hesitated--the remembrances attached to her were so painful and repugnant. But did he not now owe to her perhaps his very life? He passed his hand rapidly over his brow, as if to sweep away all earlier recollections, and, advancing quickly, extended that hand to her. The stern woman shook her head, and rejected the proffered greeting.
"You owe me no thanks," she said, in her harsh, ungracious accents; "I sought to save not you, but him."
"How!" said Darrell, startled; "you feel no resentment against the man who injured and betrayed you?"
"What my feelings may be towards him are not for you to conjecture; man could not conjecture them; I am woman. What they once were I might blush for; what they are now, I could own without shame. But you, Mr. Darrell,--you, in the hour of my uttermost anguish, when all my future was laid desolate, and the world lay crushed at my feet--you--man, chivalrous man!--you had for me no human compassion--you thrust me in scorn from your doors--you saw in my woe nothing but my error--you sent me forth, stripped of reputation, branded by your contempt, to famine or to suicide. And you wonder that I feel less resentment against him who wronged me than
