'I will tell you with pleasure,' answered I. 'You must know that I am a wandering beggar-girl, without home, parents, or friends; and when the storm began, I ran, for shelter, into the Temple of Taste, as your servants called it. So, thinking it a castle, and some sheep which threw me down, banditti, and a couple of statues, corpses, of course it was quite natural for me to suppose, when two men entered, and began to talk of having killed something, that they meant these very corpses. Was it not natural now? And so that is the plain and simple narrative of the whole affair.'
To my great surprise, a general burst of laughter ran round the hall.
'Sheep banditti, and statues corpses. Dear me,—Bless me—Well to be sure!' tittered the misses.
'Young woman,' said the gentleman, 'your incoherent account inclines me to think you concerned in some atrocious transaction, which I must make it my business to discover.'
'I am sure,' said a young lady, 'she carries the gallows in her face.'
''Tis so pretty a gallows,' said a young gentleman, 'that I wish I were hanging upon it.'
'Fie brother,' said the young lady, 'how can you talk so to a murderess?'
'And how can you talk so,' cried I, 'before you know me to be a murderess? It is not just, it is not generous, it is not feminine. Men impelled by love, may deprive our sex of virtue; but we ourselves, actuated by rancorous, not gentle impulses, rob each other of character.'
'Oh! indeed, you have done for yourself now,' said the young lady. 'That sentence of morality has settled you completely.'
'Then I presume you do not admire morality,' said I.