"'Mr. Mornington,' said she, firmly, repressing the emotion which convulsed her lips and glistened in her eyes, 'I have long wished to see you, to hear from your own lips an explanation of your extraordinary conduct, and though this meeting must be our last, I could not part with you for ever, until I had convinced you that the separation was effected by yourself.'
"'It will be difficult to prove that,' said I, 'if you really sanctioned your aunt's letter, and were privy to its contents.'
"'It was written at my request,' she replied, with provoking coldness. 'Mr. Moncton's suspicions were aroused, and your following us to the continent would have confirmed them, and rendered us both miserable. But my motives for requesting a temporary separation, were fully discussed in my letter which accompanied the one written by my aunt. To this reasonable request you returned no answer, nor, in fact, to several subsequent letters which were written during our absence abroad.'
"I trembled with agitation while she was speaking, and I fear that she misinterpreted my emotion.
"'Good Heavens!' I exclaimed at last, 'how grossly have I deceived myself into the belief that you never wrote to me—that you cast me from you without one word of pity or remorse. I never got a line from you, Charlotte. Your aunt's cruel letter came only too soon, and was answered too promptly; and to the many I have written to you since, you did not deign a reply.'
"'They never reached us, Mr. Mornington; and it is strange that these letters (which to me were, at least, matters of no small importance) should be the only ones among the numbers addressed to us by other friends, which miscarried.'
"I was stung by the incredulous air with which she spoke: it was so unlike my own simple, frank-hearted Charlotte.
"'Miss Laurie, you doubt my word?'
"'A career of vice and folly, Mr. Mornington, has made me doubt your character. While I could place confidence in the one, I never suspected deceit in the other.'
"'Your silence, Charlotte, drove me to desperation, and involved me in the dissipation to which you allude.'