"I said that I would prove to you that I knew all," Josephine went on. "I will do so. You loved Richard Crawford, I think, and he loved you with his whole heart. You were to be married, and the large property of your father would thus be kept in the family. A few months ago he ceased coming here any more, and you heard of him as plunged into riot and dissipation. Then you heard of him as sick, and that his sickness was the result of the foulest excesses, that had broken down his constitution and made him unfit for the society of any true woman. You began to answer his letters briefly and coldly, and then you ceased answering them at all. You heard those reports—you scarcely knew yourself how you heard them, but I do,—through another cousin, Egbert Crawford, who has taken the place of Richard."
The young girl's eyes stared, now, and she moved as if to rise, but the hand of Josephine on her arm held her gently down, and her words went on, that steady gaze still fixed upon her as before:
"Every one of those words was a lie, and Egbert Crawford was trying to break your heart and the heart of the man who truly loved you, that he might win you and your wealth!"
"How do you know this?—woman, how do you know this?" broke out the poor girl, her agony of doubt and suffering terrible to behold.
"I know it as if God had revealed it to me from heaven!" said Josephine Harris, casting up her eyes and lifting her hand momentarily, as if invoking that heaven for the truth she was uttering. "Not one word of these stories of Richard Crawford was true. He was pure and good. He is so, in spite of wrong and neglect. He loves you still, though he is almost broken-hearted."
"Oh, you cannot prove these things to me!" again spoke Mary Crawford, the trouble in her eyes still deeper than before, and still that trouble now strangely compounded of joy and fear.
"I can and I will!" said the strange mentor. "Your own heart is proving them to you at this moment. You see how blind you have been, but you do not yet know all."
"All? what more can there be, whether I am to believe you or not?" asked the young girl.
"More—much more!" said Josephine Harris, speaking now almost in a whisper. "Do not shriek or run away from me; but I tell you, before God, Mary Crawford, that for weeks past—perhaps for months, Egbert Crawford has been attempting to murder the relative he wished to rival, by poison."
"Poison? oh no, oh my God!" cried the young girl, now no longer to be restrained, and starting from her chair in uncontrollable agitation. "You are mad—mad—and you are trying to make me so!"