st misfortune that could befall me, and a kind of fierce
resolution came over me to struggle to the last--to marry him
in spite of all dangers; and even the devil whispered to me at
that moment that if denounced and accused I might still deny
the charge; accuse my accuser in her turn; charge her with
having invented a calumnious lie, and with Henry's aid (which
one look, one kind word, from me could command) ride off
triumphantly, and defy them all. But as the thought passed
through my mind, I shuddered at the rapid strides I was making
in falsehood, and felt a horror of myself which I can hardly
describe. There was I, kneeling in mock homage before God
(that God who had saved both Edward and myself from a fate
worse than death), while bad passions were raging in my soul,
and thoughts of evil working in my mind.

The posture of prayer, the words which I had mechanically
uttered, brought on one of those sudden and unaccountable
revulsions of feeling which sometimes succeed the fiercest
assaults of the tempter, as if our guardian angel had wrestled
with the spirit of evil, and driven him away for the time. I
remembered her to whom much was forgiven because she had loved
much; and as I thought of that Saviour--that man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief, at whose feet she knelt--ay, even
while seven foul fiends were struggling in her heart, I longed
to kneel before Him too in deep prostration of spirit, and lay
all my sorrows, all my sins, all my difficulties, at His
sacred feet, bathing them as she did with tears, and wiping
them with the hairs of her head. Oh! if in that moment of
emotion, in that hour of penitence, I could have gone to one
of those, who, ministering at God's altar, and endowed with
His commission, have authority from Him to pronounce words of
pardon in His name; if the fatal barrier which habit and
prejudice so often raise between the priest of God and the
erring and overburthened souls committed to his charge, had
not in my case existed; if from his lips I could have heard
the injunction to forsake all and follow Jesus, and he had
added, "Do this and be forgiven," it might have changed my
fate. But, as it was, my penitence spent itself in unavailing
tears, and my yearnings towards a better course ended in the
same bewildering and oft-repeated question, which I could not,
dared not, answer to myself, or for myself: "Where lies the
path of duty through the intricate maze in which guilt,
misfortune