Chapter 20

Credit me, friend, it hath been ever thus,
Since the ark rested on Mount Ararat.
False man hath sworn, and woman hath believed--
Repented and reproach'd, and then believed once more.
_The New World._

By the time that Margaret returned with Monna Paula, the Lady Hermione
was rising from the table at which she had been engaged in writing
something on a small slip of paper, which she gave to her attendant.

"Monna Paula," she said, "carry this paper to Roberts the cash-keeper;
let them give you the money mentioned in the note, and bring it hither
presently."

Monna Paula left the room, and her mistress proceeded.

"I do not know," she said, "Margaret, if I have done, and am doing,
well in this affair. My life has been one of strange seclusion, and I
am totally unacquainted with the practical ways of this world--an
ignorance which I know cannot be remedied by mere reading.--I fear I
am doing wrong to you, and perhaps to the laws of the country which
affords me refuge, by thus indulging you; and yet there is something
in my heart which cannot resist your entreaties."

"O, listen to it--listen to it, dear, generous lady!" said Margaret,
throwing herself on her knees and grasping those of her benefactress
and looking in that attitude like a beautiful mortal in the act of
supplicating her tutelary angel; "the laws of men are but the
injunctions of mortality, but what the heart prompts is the echo of
the voice from heaven within us."

"Rise, rise, maiden," said Hermione; "you affect me more than I
thought I could have been moved by aught that should approach me. Rise
and tell me whence it comes, that, in so short a time, your thoughts,
your looks, your speech, and even your slightest actions, are changed
from those of a capricious and fanciful girl, to all this energy and
impassioned eloquence of word and action?"

"I am sure I know not, dearest lady," said Margaret, looking down;
"but I suppose that, when I was a trifler, I was only thinking of
trifles. What I now reflect is deep and serious, and I am thankful if
my speech and manner bear reasonable proportion to my thoughts."

"It must be so," said the lady; "yet the change seems a rapid and
strange one. It seems to be as if a childish girl had at once shot up
into deep-thinking and impassioned woman, ready to make exertions
alike, and sacrifices, with all that vain devotion to a favourite
object of affection, which is often so basely rewarded."

The Lady Hermione sighed bitterly, and Monna Paula entered ere the
conversation proceeded farther. She spoke to her mistress in the
foreign