that girl's white angel face touched me, when she
said (and I knew she meant it), 'If I find from mother that you are
indeed my father, then I will do my duty. I will take your hand--I
will own you my father--face the world's contempt, and we will bear
our disgrace together as best me may.' She would have done it, at all
risk, and I have pitied her. It is so clear her, and give her the
name she is entitled to, that at last I have spoken the truth. She is
a noble brave girl, too good for you, too good for her father; far
too good to own Rene Laurance for her grandfather. When he sees the
child he paid me to claim, he will not need my oath to satisfy him
that in body she is every inch a Laurance; but where she got her
white soul God only knows--certainly it is neither Merle nor
Laurance. You owe your salvation to your sweet, brave child, and have
no cause to thank me, for I shall always hate you."

Had some ministering angel removed from her hand the hemlock of that
loathsome vengeance she had contemplated, and substituted the nectar
of hope and joy, the renewal of a life unclouded by the dread of
disgrace that had hung over her like a pall for seventeen years? When
gathering her garments about her to plunge into a dark gulf replete
with seething horror, a strong hand had lifted her away from the
fatal ledge, and she heard the voice of her youth calling her to the
almost forgotten vale of peace; while supreme among the thronging
visions of joy gleamed the fair face of her blue-eyed daughter. Had
she been utterly mad in resolving to stain her own pure hand by the
touch of Rene Laurance?

In the light of retrospection the unnatural and monstrous deed she
had contemplated, seemed fraught with a horror scarcely inferior to
that which lends such lurid lustre to the "Oedipus;" and now she
cowered in shame and loathing as she reflected upon all that she had
deliberately arranged while sitting upon the terrace of the Villa
Reale. Could the unbridled thirst for revenge have dragged her on
into a monomania that would finally have ended in downright madness?
Once nominally the wife of the man whom she so thoroughly abhorred,
would not reason have fled before the horrors to which she linked
herself? The rebellious bitterness of her soul melted away, and a
fervent gratitude to Heaven fell like dew upon her arid stony heart,
waking words of penitence and praise to which her lips had long been
strangers.

Adversity in the guise of