d
fever burned in my veins, a frenzy of anguish akin to remorse, as if
_I_ had wronged the dead, and sent her drifting, helpless, out to the
unknown world. A pitiable soul, who preferred misery for her portion,
rather than betray the man she loved, or become partaker of his crime,
had crept back, after years of self-imposed absence, with death in her
heart, to see the old place and the new wife,--and how had I received
her? With horror and shuddering, as though she were some guilty thing,
to be held at arm's-length. Not as one woman, generous, forgiving,
hoping for mercy hereafter, should receive another, however erring. It
was a sad boon, perhaps, she had endowed me with; yet it was all she
prized and cherished.

With a nobleness of magnanimity, a passionate self-sacrifice, which
none but a woman could be capable of, Madame C---- had divested
herself of all peculiarities of clothing by which she could be
identified. It was only by recognizing the features, and a singular
scar upon the forehead, that I knew it was herself. She was buried by
stranger hands, however; we dared not come forward to claim her.

The excitement attendant on this miserable death, and the
circumstances which preceded it, laid me, for the first time in my
life, upon a sick-bed. I was unconscious for many weeks of anything
save intolerable pain and intolerable heat. A fiery agony of fever
leaped in my veins, and scorched up my life-blood. I believe Monsieur
cared for me, and nursed me attentively during this illness.

The fever left me; exhausted, spent, my life shrunken up within me, my
energy burned out, a puny, spiritless remnant of the strong woman who
lay down upon that couch, I lay despondent, vacant of all interest in
the world hitherto so exciting to me. I had not seen Monsieur since
this apparent commencement of recovery. A great, good-natured nurse
kept watch over me, and fed me with spiritless dainties, tasteless,
unsatisfying.

One day, when my senses began to settle a little, and things began
to take shape again, I asked for Monsieur. He came and stood at my
bedside.

"Christine," said he, "you have no faith in my power of making angels.
I have not made one of you. Being divided in our theories, we will
divide our earthly goods. We will part. Should you as a woman deem it
your duty to inform against me, I shall not think it wrong. I shall
bear it as a philosopher. You have no proof, you can substantiate
nothing; but it may be a