to say
nothing, so long as the choice of alternatives was left to me. On the
day when Mr. Mirabel implored me to save him, that choice was no longer
mine--and you know what I did. And now again when suspicion (after all
the long interval that had passed) has followed and found that innocent
man, you know what I have done. What more do you ask of me?'

"'Your pardon,' I said, 'for not having understood you--and a last
favor. May I repeat what I have heard to the one person of all others
who ought to know, and who must know, what you have told me?'

"It was needless to hint more plainly that I was speaking of Emily. Miss
Jethro granted my request.

"'It shall be as you please,' she answered. 'Say for me to _his_
daughter, that the grateful remembrance of her is my one refuge from the
thoughts that tortured me, when we spoke together on her last night at
school. She has made this dead heart of mine feel a reviving breath of
life, when I think of her. Never, in our earthly pilgrimage, shall we
meet again--I implore her to pity and forget me. Farewell, Mr. Morris;
farewell forever.'

"I confess that the tears came into my eyes. When I could see clearly
again, I was alone in the room."

CHAPTER LXVII. THE TRUE CONSOLATION.

Emily closed the pages which told her that her father had died by his
own hand.

Cecilia still held her tenderly embraced. By slow degrees, her head
dropped until it rested on her friend's bosom. Silently she suffered.
Silently Cecilia bent forward, and kissed her forehead. The sounds that
penetrated to the room were not out of harmony with the time. From a
distant house the voices of children were just audible, singing the
plaintive melody of a hymn; and, now and then, the breeze blew the first
faded leaves of autumn against the window. Neither of the girls knew how
long the minutes followed each other uneventfully, before there was a
change. Emily raised her head, and looked at Cecilia.

"I have one friend left," she said.

"Not only me, love--oh, I hope not only me!"

"Yes. Only you."

"I want to say something, Emily; but I am afraid of hurting you."

"My dear, do you remember what we once read in a book of history at
school? It told of the death of a tortured man, in the old time, who
was broken on the wheel. He lived through it long enough to say that
the agony, after the first stroke of the club, dulled his capacity for
feeling pain when the next blows fell. I fancy pain of the m