its
suggestions of guilt and death. It haunted my
vision; it ruined my life; it destroyed my
peace. If I shut my eyes at night, it opened
before me. If I arrayed myself in jewels and
rich raiment, and paused to take but a passing
look at myself in the glass, this horror
immediately came between me and my own image,
blotting the vision of wealth from my eyes; so
that I went into the homes of the noble or the
courts of the king a clouded, miserable thing,
seeing nothing but that black and narrow slit
closing upon youth and beauty and innocence
forever and forever and forever.

My child came. Ah! that I should have to
mention her here! I do it in penance; I do it
in despair; since with her my heart woke, and
for her that heart is now broken, never to be
healed again. Oh, if the knowledge of my misery
wakens in you one thought that is not of
revenge, cast a pitying eye upon this darling
one, left in a hateful country without friends,
without lover, without means. For friends and
lover and means will all leave her with the
revelations which the morning will bring, and
unless Heaven is merciful to her innocence as
it has been just to my guilt, she will have no
other goal before her than that which has
opened its refuge to me.

As for her father, let Heaven deal with him. He
gave me this darling child; so I may not curse
him, even if I cannot bless.

MARAH.

* * * * *

OCTOBER 23, 1791.

I have seen one bright thing to-day, and that was the faint and almost
unearthly gleam which shot for a moment from beneath Honora's falling
lids as I told her what love was and how the marquis only awaited her
permission to speak to assure her of his boundless affection and his
undying purpose to be true to her even to the point of assuming her
griefs and taking upon himself the protection of her innocence.

If it had not been for this, I should have felt that the world was too
dark to remain in, and life too horrible to be endured.

* * * * *

NOVEMBER 30, 1791.

I thought that when Honora Urquhart left my house to be married to M. De
Fontaine, in the church below the hill, peace would return t