trary, he appeared so preoccupied, so
abstracted, that I reproached him with indifference to my troubles. It
is not possible that he knew all, while I briefly summed up a portion
of the past."

"At that moment he was thoroughly cognizant of everything that I could
tell him. But, at least, one honorable, trustworthy man yet graces the
race; one pure, incorruptible, and consistent Christian remains to
shed lustre upon a church that can nowhere boast his peer. I confided
all to Dr. Grey, and he has kept the trust. Ah, Edith, if you had only
reposed the same confidence in me, during those halcyon days of our
early friendship,--days that seem to me now as far off, as dim and
unreal, as those starry nights when I lay in my little crib, dreaming
of that mother whose face I never saw, whose smile is one of the
surprises and blessings reserved for eternity,--how different my lot
and yours might have been! Why did you not trust me with your happy
hopes, your lover's name and difficulties? How differently I would
have invested that fortune, which proved our common ruin, and doomed
three lives to uselessness and woe. To-day you might have proudly worn
the name that I utterly detest; and I, the outcast, the wanderer, the
tireless, friendless waif, drifting despairingly down the tide of
time,--even I, the unloved, might have been, not a solitary cumberer,
not a household upas,--but why taunt the hideous Actual with a blessed
and beautiful Impossible? Ah, truly, truly,--

"'What might have been, I know, is not:
What must be, must be borne;
But ah! what hath been will not be forgot,
Never, oh! never, in the years to follow!'"

She closed her eyes and seemed pondering the past, and mutely the
governess prayed that hallowed memories of their former affection
might soften her apparently petrified heart.

Edith saw a great change overspread the countenance, but could not
accurately interpret its import; and her own heart began to beat the
long-roll.

The heavy black eyelashes lying on Mrs. Gerome's marble cheeks
glistened, trembled, and tears stole slowly across her face. She
raised her hand, but dropped it in her lap, and frowned slightly and
sighed. Then she lifted it once more, and looking through the shining
mist that magnified her splendid eyes, she laid her fingers on the
golden head of the kneeling woman.

"You and I have innocently wronged and ruined each other; you with
your beauty, I with my accursed gold. Ti