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Rh of the effect could carry with it no possible revelation of the cause. All that could be known beyond the small circle of her confidential friends was, that a correspondence had taken place with a view to the discovery of her traducer, and that it had terminated in the sudden breaking off of a connection of which the permanence seemed assured, and to which the marriage-seal was about to be affixed. The inference was much too fair for spite and ill-nature to miss. The highmindedness of her decision, and the dignity of her whole conduct at this most trying and painful crisis of her life, could be judged of but by a few, while her seemingly unvindicated name might be a subject of scorn or of pity in every circle of gossips. That "very bitter sense of innocence and injury" which we have seen her entertaining, could avail her nothing against the presumption of the cold-hearted or the malicious, that "there might possibly be something in it after all," as the inquiry had ended in a broken contract, a doubly embittered spirit, and a situation more lonely than before.

All this was what her experience told her, on reflection, she had too much reason to fear, and her judgment warned her at the same time of her utter helplessness, and the impossibility of guarding herself against such terrible misconceptions. She undoubtedly imagined the evil to be greater than it really was. But it must be owned that her own injudiciousness still exposed her to attacks; and that to persons of an irritable or over-credulous temper, she might easily become an object of suspicion and aversion, especially to her own sex. Her warmth of heart, her exuberance of gratitude, even on trivial occasions of service, her buoyant spirits, her recklessness as to consequences, and her stubborn