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its suggestions of guilt and death. It haunted my vision; it ruined my life; it destroyed my peace. If I shut my eyes at night, it opened before me. If I arrayed myself in jewels and rich raiment, and paused to take but a passing look at myself in the glass, this horror immediately came between me and my own image, blotting the vision of wealth from my eyes; so that I went into the homes of the noble or the courts of the king a clouded, miserable thing, seeing nothing but that black and narrow slit closing upon youth and beauty and innocence forever and forever and forever. My child came. Ah! that I should have to mention her here! I do it in penance; I do it in despair; since with her my heart woke, and for her that heart is now broken, never to be healed again. Oh, if the knowledge of my misery wakens in you one thought that is not of revenge, cast a pitying eye upon this darling one, left in a hateful country without friends, without lover, without means. For friends and lover and means will all leave her with the revelations which the morning will bring, and unless Heaven is merciful to her innocence as it has been just to my guilt, she will have no other goal before her than that which has opened its refuge to me. As for her father, let Heaven deal with him. He gave me this darling child; so I may not curse him, even if I cannot bless. MARAH. * * * * * OCTOBER 23, 1791. I have seen one bright thing to-day, and that was the faint and almost unearthly gleam which shot for a moment from beneath Honora's falling lids as I told her what love was and how the marquis only awaited her permission to speak to assure her of his boundless affection and his undying purpose to be true to her even to the point of assuming her griefs and taking upon himself the protection of her innocence. If it had not been for this, I should have felt that the world was too dark to remain in, and life too horrible to be endured. * * * * * NOVEMBER 30, 1791. I thought that when Honora Urquhart left my house to be married to M. De Fontaine, in the church below the hill, peace would return t
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