preference. Driven to desperation by the report of his marriage to Miss Forrester, she adopted the decisive expedient of making her rival her confidante. She told her story, and produced her vouchers, in the shape of some of Colonel Stuart's letters, and she cried over them, and her own guilt, and his treachery, and Mr. Neville's wrongs; and in the madness of her passion and her jealousy, threw away her own character, her pride, her delicacy, all, so that she could prove that the man she loved was a villain. She succeeded, so far as thwarting Colonel Stuart in his hope of marrying Mary could be called success. Whether disappointing him in his dearest hopes were a likely method to regain his affections she had not perhaps considered. Miss Forrester declined a continuance of Colonel Stuart's attentions, and when pressed by him to assign a reason for her change of manner, she frankly pleaded her knowledge of his want of principle, his seduction of Mrs. Neville, and his heartlessness in deserting her. He flew into a violent rage with Mrs. Neville, and ended by being scarcely less furious with Miss Forrester. A fortnight later when she became a rich heiress, his anger turned upon himself for having quarrelled so completely with her, and to save his own character he changed the date of their disagreement, and allowed his friends to suppose that her money had been the root of his evil fortune. All this Helen repeated to Lord Beaufort, and his knowledge of all parties gave him instant conviction of the truth of the story.
"But why does she say that the fortune is not hers now?"
"That is a point she would be unwilling to explain, but that she is anxious it should be understood now that she is not an heiress; and she imagines that it is ignorance on this subject which induced Colonel Stuart to follow her here. It was always supposed that the fortune which old Mrs. Forrester left to her would have been divided between her and two brothers: one is in the West Indies with his
