noffending, and for so
miserable a motive!"

"But I tell you, I swear to you, I never dreamed I could cause such
sorrow; and that young man, that Margrave, put it into my head!"

"Margrave! He had left L---- long before that letter was written!"

"But he came back for a day just before I wrote: it was the very day.
I met him in the lane yonder. He asked after you,--after Miss Ashleigh;
and when he spoke he laughed, and I said, 'Miss Ashleigh had been ill,
and was gone away;' and he laughed again. And I thought he knew more
than he would tell me, so I asked him if he supposed Mrs. Ashleigh would
come back, and said how much I should like to take this house if she did
not; and again he laughed, and said, 'Birds never stay in the nest after
the young ones are hurt,' and went away singing. When I got home, his
laugh and his song haunted me. I thought I saw him still in my room,
prompting me to write, and I sat down and wrote. Oh, pardon, pardon me!
I have been a foolish poor creature, but never meant to do such harm.
The Evil One tempted me! There he is, near me now! I see him yonder!
there, at the doorway. He comes to claim me! As you hope for mercy
yourself, free me from him! Forgive me!"

I made an effort over myself. In naming Margrave as her tempter, the
woman had suggested an excuse, echoed from that innermost cell of my
mind, which I recoiled from gazing into, for there I should behold his
image. Inexpiable though the injury she had wrought against me and mine,
still the woman was human--fellow-creature-like myself;--but he?

I took the pale hand that still pressed my arm, and said, with firm
voice,--

"Be comforted. In the name of Lilian, my wife, I forgive you for her and
for me as freely and as fully as we are enjoined by Him, against whose
precepts the best of us daily sin, to forgive--we children of wrath--to
forgive one another!"

"Heaven bless you!--oh, bless you!" she murmured, sinking back upon her
pillow.

"Ah!" thought I, "what if the pardon I grant for a wrong far deeper than
I inflicted on him whose imprecation smote me in this chamber, should
indeed be received as atonement, and this blessing on the lips of the
dying annul the dark curse that the dead has left on my path through the
Valley of the Shadow!"

I left my patient sleeping quietly,--the sleep that precedes the last.
As I went down the stairs into the hall, I saw Mrs. Poyntz standing at
the threshold, speaking to the man-servant and