innocence would have been her support, but, in place of this best prop to
the afflicted, guilt flashed on her memory every time she flew for aid to
reflection.

At length, from horrible rumination, a momentary alleviation came: "but
one more step in wickedness," she triumphantly said, "and all my shame,
all my sufferings are over." She congratulated herself upon the lucky
thought; when, but an instant after, the tears trickled down her face for
the sorrow her death, her sinful death, would bring to her poor and
beloved parents. She then thought upon the probability of a sigh it
might draw from William; and, the pride, the pleasure of that little
tribute, counterpoised every struggle on the side of life.

As she saw the sun decline, "When you rise again," she thought, "when you
peep bright to-morrow morning into this little room to call me up, I
shall not be here to open my eyes upon a hateful day--I shall no more
regret that you have waked me!--I shall be sound asleep, never to wake
again in this wretched world--not even the voice of William would then
awake me."

While she found herself resolved, and evening just come on, she hurried
out of the house, and hastened to the fatal wood; the scene of her
dishonour--the scene of intended murder--and now the meditated scene of
suicide.

As she walked along between the close-set tree, she saw, at a little
distance, the spot where William first made love to her; and where at
every appointment he used to wait her coming. She darted her eye away
from this place with horror; but, after a few moments of emotion, she
walked slowly up to it--shed tears, and pressed with her trembling lips
that tree, against which she was accustomed to lean while he talked with
her. She felt an inclination to make this the spot to die in; but her
preconcerted, and the less frightful death, of leaping into a pool on the
other side of the wood, induced her to go onwards.

Presently, she came near the place where _her_ child, and _William's_,
was exposed to perish. Here she started with a sense of the most
atrocious guilt; and her whole frame shook with the dread of an
approaching, an omnipotent Judge, to sentence her for murder.

She halted, appalled, aghast, undetermined whether to exist longer
beneath the pressure of a criminal conscience, or die that very hour, and
meet her final condemnation.

She proceeded a few steps farther, and beheld the very ivy-bush close to
which her infant lay