ng. Between them stood that child whom she had
sacrificed, and he had betrayed. With words of peace and of
holy confidence, passing from one to the other, Alice spoke of
hope and pardon, and turned the agony of the aged sufferer
into penitence. By degrees she learnt from her lips all the
secrets of her soul. From her she gathered the knowledge of
that dark cloud which had hung over Ellen's life, and while
she trembled and wept, in her heart there rose (as Mrs.
Middleton had said) an immense pity, a boundless charity. Day
by day she watched and prayed by Henry's side, and at last
discerned a ray of light through the gloom. The fever left
him, and one day that she had supported his head for several
weary hours, he opened his languid eyes and said, "Alice, is
it you?"

She pressed upon his cheek a kiss, like a mother's to a
rescued child; but when he whispered in her ear the terrible
question on which his life and his reason depended, her face
was as pale as his, and her tears fell like rain-drops on his
brow. Gradually his strength returned, but still at times his
mind wandered. For hours he would remain with his eyes fixed
on vacancy, and his lips would move as if unconsciously, and
form the fatal words of inquiry which never received an
answer. Sometimes he took Alice for Ellen, and kneeling at her
feet he, would implore her pardon, and curse and upbraid
himself as her murderer and destroyer. With heroic patience,
but with a sickening heart and a shuddering frame she listened
to these ravings, and met his wild and involuntary confessions
with a silent appeal to Heaven for mercy for him, and for
strength for herself.

After a while she went with him to Elmsley, and there
continued her work of love and endurance. Her strength seemed
to increase with the demands upon it. Mrs. Middleton's broken
spirit, and helpless despondency, needed her support almost as
much as Henry's weakened mind. Her grandmother had returned to
the cottage at Bridman, and nothing cheered the solitude of
that melancholy abode, but the occasional visits of that angel
who moved amidst all these various sufferings and dark
associations like a messenger of peace. It was as a hard task,
and many a martyr's palm has perchance been more easily won.
She became identified with all their sorrows--almost with the
remorse she witnessed; perhaps she suffered more than any of
them, for she knew more than any one else of that terrible
history which had drive