y as your friend--nay, your sister, if you will. Let me
persuade you to leave this strange and desultory life; choose your own
home: I am rich to overflowing; all you can desire shall be at your
command. He shall not know more of you unless (to assuage the remorse
that the memory of you does, I know, still occasion him) you will suffer
him to learn, from your own hand, that you are well and at ease, and
that you do not revoke your former pardon. Come, dear Lucilla!" and the
arm of the generous and bright-souled Constance gently wound round the
feeble frame of Lucilla, who now, reclining back, wept as if her heart
would break.

"Come, give me the deep, the grateful joy of thinking I can minister to
your future comforts. I was the cause of all your wretchedness; but
for me, Godolphin would have been yours for ever--would probably, by
marriage, have redressed your wrongs; but for me you would not have
wandered an outcast over the inhospitable world. Let me in something
repair what I have cost you. Speak to me, Lucilla!"

"Yes, I will speak to you," said poor Lucilla, throwing herself on
the ground, and clasping with grateful warmth the knees of her gentle
soother; "for long, long years--I dare not think how many--I have not
heard the voice of kindness fall upon my ear. Among strange faces and
harsh tongues hath my lot been cast; and if I have wrought out from the
dreams of my young hours the course of this life (which you contemn,
but not justly), it has been that I may stand alone and not dependent;
feared and not despised. And now you, you whom I admire and envy, and
would reverence more than living woman (for he loves you and deems
you worthy of him), you, lady, speak to me as a sister would speak,
and--and----" Here sobs interrupted Lucilla's speech; and Constance
herself, almost equally affected, and finding it vain to attempt to
raise her, knelt by her side, and tenderly caressing her, sought to
comfort her, even while she wept in doing so.

And this was a beautiful passage in the life of the lofty Constance.
Never did she seem more noble than when, thus lowly and humbling
herself, she knelt beside the poor victim of her husband's love, and
whispered to the diseased and withering heart tidings of comfort,
charity, home, and a futurity of honour and of peace. But this was not
a dream that could long lull the perturbed and erring brain of Lucilla
Volktman. And when she recovered, in some measure, her self-possession,