te burst of sorrow succeeded
it. The only man she had ever loved--around whom, centred her most
precious memories--had died, then, thus miserably, after miserable years
of bondage endured on her account. She saw him with her mind's eye once
more as when he had clasped her in his arms for the first time upon the
ruined tower--as when he had rained his kisses on her lips beside the
Wishing Well--in his youth and beauty and passion. Her nineteen years of
loveless wedlock were swept away, and left her as she saw herself in the
little portrait he himself had painted, and which was now his legacy.
His menaces and vows of vengeance against her and hers were all
forgotten; her woman's heart was loyal to him whom she had owned its
lord, and once more did him fealty.

"Oh, Richard, Richard, my dear love," cried she; "God knows I would have
died to save you!"

"Come here, Harry--come here," whispered Mrs. Basil, "and let me kiss
you. I would that I could weep like you; but the fountain of my tears
has long been dry. I thought you would have been glad to feel that you
and yours were safe--that retribution was averted from the man, your
husband; but I now see I did you wrong. Your heart is touched--you
remember him as he was before the taint of crime was on him."

"It never was!" cried Harry, passionately. "He never meant to wrong my
father of a shilling."

"Well said, dear Harry; well said. He was himself a wronged--a murdered
man. Imprisoned for nineteen years, and then to perish thus! And yet men
talk of Heaven's justice! My boy! my boy!"

The two women were silent for a while--the one gazing with dry eyes but
tender yearning face upon the other, as she rocked herself to and fro,
and shook with stifled sobs.

"Dear Harry, you must not desert me now," pleaded the former, pitifully;
"I am very old, and this has broken me. He was my all--my only one on
earth--and he is dead. I shall not trouble you long. We two, child, were
the only ones that loved him, and we love him still. Let me cling to
you, Harry, since it is but for a little while; and let us talk of him
together, when we are alone, and think of what he was. So bright, so
gay, so--Oh, my boy! my boy!"

The tears rushed to the mother's eyes at last. Hard Fate was softened
for a while toward it's life-long victim; and side by side sat the two
bereaved women, each striving to comfort the other, after woman's
fashion, by painting in its brightest colors that dead Past whi