ll, you would know that I could not insult
you, if I would. Trouble, distraction, have made me coarse,--false,
too, to myself as unjust and injurious to you; for I know your virtues,
and believe in them as I believe in little else in this world or the
next. If in my hour of agony and shame I could implore the help of any
human being, I would come to you--dear, honest, brave girl!--before all
others, to fling myself at your feet, and kiss your hands, and beseech
you to pity me and save me from myself, to hold my hot head on your
gentle bosom, and your soothing hand on my fierce heart. Good-by!
Good-by! I need not ask your pardon again,--you have no anger for such
as I. But if your blessed loneliness is ever disturbed by vulgar,
chattering visitors, you will not name me to them, or confess that you
have seen me." And ere Miss Wimple could utter the gentle words that
were already on her lips, Madeline was gone.

For a while Miss Wimple remained standing on the spot, gazing
anxiously, but vacantly, toward the door by which the half-mad lady had
departed,--her soft, deep eyes full of painful apprehension. Then she
resumed her little rocking-chair, and, as she gathered up her work from
the floor where she had dropped it, tears trickled down her cheeks; she
sighed and shook her head, in utter sorrow.

"They were always strange women," she thought, "those Splurges,--not a
sound heart nor a healthy mind among them. Could their false, barren
life have maddened this proud Madeline? Else what did she mean by her
'hot head' and her 'fierce heart'? And what had that Philip Withers to
do with her trouble and her distraction? She recollected now that Simon
had once said, in his odd, significant way, that Mr. Withers was a
charming person to contemplate from a safe distance,--Simon, who never
lent himself to idle detraction. She remembered, too, that she had
often reproached herself for her irrational prejudice against the
man,--that she was forever finding something false and sinister in the
face that every one else said was emi