hopelessness of spirit, "I pity, forgive, pray for you, weep for you."

"I want neither pity, forgiveness, nor prayers," he sullenly answered.
"I want nothing but freedom, and that you cannot give. Go back to your
husband, and tell him I curse him for the riches that tempted me, and
you for the jewels that betrayed. You might have given me gold instead
of diamonds, and then I would have been safe from the hell-hounds of
law. Curse on the sordid fear"--

"Stop," cried Richard, seizing the arm he had raised in imprecation, and
fixing on him an eye of stem command. "You shall not wound her ears with
such foul blasphemy. Utter another word of reproach to her, and I will
leave you for ever to the doom you merit. Is this the return you make
for her filial devotion? Betrayer of her mother, robber of her husband,
coward as well as villain, how dare you blast her with your impious
curse?"

Richard forgot at that moment he was speaking to a father, in the
intensity of his indignation and scorn. His eye burned, his lip
quivered, he looked as if he could have hurled him against the granite
walls.

St. James quailed and writhed out of his grasp. His face turned the hue
of ashes, and he staggered back like a drunken man.

"I did not mean to curse her," he cried. "I am mad half the time, and
know not what I say. Who would not be mad, cut off from communion with
their kind, in such a den as this, with fiends whispering, and devils
tempting, and know that it is not for a day, a week, a month, nor even a
year; but for ten long years! And what will life be then, supposing I
drag out its hated length through imprisonment, and horror, and despair?
What is it now? A worn shred, a shivelled scroll, a blasted remnant of
humanity!"

He sat down again on the side of the bed, and leaning forward, bent his
face downward and buried it in his hands. Groans, that seemed to tear
his breast as they forced their passage, burst spasmodically from his
lips. Oh! if that travailing soul, travailing in sin and sorrow, would
cast itself on the bosom of Divine Mercy, would prostrate itself at the
foot of the cross, till the scarlet dye of crime was washed white in a
Saviour's blood! What were ten years of imprisonment and anguish, to
eternal ages burning with the unquenchable fires of remorse!

"O father!" I cried, moved by an irresistible impulse, and approaching
him with trembling steps, "these prison walls may become the house of
God, the gate of h