r very indignation, although just, humbled her, for with a flash
of thought, she was in Gethsemane, and saw the meek and Divine Jesus
receive the kiss of Judas. "Why, then," she thought, "should _I_
shrink back from one who needs my pity more than my hate?"

"I shall sit up a little longer, Helen. I feel quite uneasy about
Uncle Stillinghast. Good night," she said, holding out her hand to
Helen.

"What a curious little one you are, May," said Helen, holding the tiny
hand a moment in her own; "but do come up soon, for really I am afraid
to be up there alone."

And Helen went up to their chamber, and closed the door. She was
alone, and had inadvertently placed her candle on May's table before
the old Spanish crucifix. A small circle of light was thrown around
it, from the midst of which the sorrowful face, in its depicted agony
of blood and tears, and the measure of a world's woe stamped on its
divine lineaments, looked on her. Terrified and silent, she stood
gazing on it--her hands clasped--her lips apart, and trembling. The
crown of thorns--the transfixed hands and feet, from which the blood
seemed flowing--the wounded side--the sorrowful eyes, appealed to her.
"For thee!" whispered the angel conscience; "it was all for thee!--this
ignominy--this suffering--this death--oh, erring one! It was all for
thee Divine Jesus assumed the anguish and bitterness of the cross! Oh,
wanderer! why add new thorns to that awful crown of agony? Why insult
the son of God, who suffers for you, by your derelictions and betrayal?"

Stricken and afraid, she would have fled from the spot, but she could
not move; her temples throbbed and her limbs trembled, when, lifting
her eyes, she beheld a portrait of the mother of Sorrows, whose
countenance, sublime in its blended tenderness and grief, seemed to
look down with pity on her. She sunk weeping to the floor, and
murmured, "Intercede for me, oh, Lady of Sorrows! I have wounded thy
Divine Son by my transgressions; I fear to approach Him, who is my
terrible Judge; pity me, then, that I may not become utterly cast
away!" Then she wept softly, and it seemed that, in this hour of keen
repentance, the errors of the past would be atoned for--that a new life
would dawn around her; that in prodigal's attire of repentance and
tears, she would return humbly to her Father's house. But the spirit
of the world had wound its deadly fetters too closely around her; the
time of her return and pu