"I think I will tell you all about it. Something, I know not what, impels me to speak tonight, in this little circle of select friends, on a theme on which I have been silent for years. Claudia, my dearest, if the jealousy of my old husband and the gossip of my envious rivals had been all, that would not have hurt me so much. But there was worse to come. The wretch, denied admittance to our house, pursued me with his attentions elsewhere; whenever and wherever I walked or rode out he would be sure to join me. I have said such was his evil reputation, that his society would have brought reproach to any woman, under any circumstances; judge you, then, what it must have brought upon me, the young wife of an old man!"
"Had you no male relative to chastise the villain and send him about his business?" inquired the judge.
Berenice smiled sadly and shook her head.
"My husband and my father were both very old men," she said; "I had but one resource—to confine myself to the house and deny myself to visitors. We were then living in our town house in Edinboro'. There my old husband died, and there I spent the year of my widowhood. There my father came to me, and also my kinsman Isaacs."
"Isaacs!" impulsively exclaimed Ishmael, as his thoughts flew back to his Hebrew fellow-passenger.
"Yes; did you know him?"
"I knew a Jew of that name; most probably the same; but I beg your pardon, dear lady; pray proceed with your narrative."
"I mentioned my kinsman Isaacs, because I always suspected him to be a party to a stratagem formed by Captain Dugald at that time to get me into his power. Captain Dugald scarcely let the first six months of my widowhood pass by before he began to lay siege to my house; not to me personally; for I always denied myself to him. But he came on visits to my kinsman Isaacs, with whom he had struck up a great intimacy. He had much at stake, you see, for in the first place he did me the honor to approve of me personally, and in the second place he highly approved of my large fortune. So he persevered with all the zeal of a lover and all the tact of a fortune-hunter. Several times, through the connivance of my kinsman, he contrived to surprise me into an interview, and upon each occasion he urged his suit; but of course, in vain. Captain Dugald was what is called a 'dare-devil,' and I think he rather gloried in that name. He acted upon the maxim that 'all stratagems are fair in love as in war.' And he resorted to a stratagem to get me into his power, and reduce me to the alternative of marrying him or losing my good name forever."
"Good Heaven! he did not attempt to carry you off by violence," exclaimed Claudia.
The countess laughed.