“Have I no cause to reproach you?” asked she, looking up into his face as if she would read his very soul.
“If I deserve upbraiding from you, I am totally unconscious; but tell me, dear Mary, how have I offended?”
“Rumor has been busy spreading reports that you have been addressing another; and it says that you did not address her in vain. But now, Harry, I do not believe one word of what I have been told.”
“But you have doubted me, Mary,” said he, mournfully. “There is but one sun in heaven—there is but one Mary to my eyes on earth!”
“Forgive me, Harry? Mrs. Webster confirmed all these reports when she returned.”
“Mrs. Webster is not my friend, Mary; and I suspect all those reports have come from her. I have long known her disregard of truth, as well as her design on you.”
“I now begin to penetrate a plot, and believe her to be the inventor of all the base charges against you. Alas! the inborn wickedness of the human heart.”
“Now, tell me of the letter, Mary, that aroused me, for a time, from the sweetest and brightest dream that ever gladdened the heart of man?”
“Oh!” said she, laughing, “my very dear friend was no other than Uncle Pluribusi.”
“Then you have been romancing a little, to be revenged on me?” inquired he, archly.