I will not tempt further suffering. And
yet--once more--only once? could that do harm? Ah, God, my God, be
merciful!" she cried, clasping her hands and lifting them above her
bowed head. Then remembering, in the midst of her anguish, some words
she had been reading that morning, she repeated them with a bitter
emphasis,--"What can wringing of the hands do, that which is ordained to
alter?" As she did so she tore asunder her clasped hands, to drop them
clinched by her side,--the gesture of despair substituted for that of
hope.

"It is not Heaven I am to besiege!" she exclaimed. "Will I never learn
that? Its justice cannot overcome the injustice of man. My God!" she
cried then, with a sudden, terrible energy, "our punishment should be
light, our rest sure, our paradise safe, at the end, since we have to
make now such awful atonement; since men compel us to endure the pangs
of purgatory, the tortures of hell, here upon earth."

After that she sat for a long while silent, evidently revolving a
thousand thoughts of every shape and hue, judging from the myriads of
lights and shadows that flitted over her face. At last, rousing herself,
she perceived that she had no more time to spend in this sorrowful
employment,--that she must prepare to go away from him, as her heart
said, forever. "Forever!" it repeated. "This, then, is the close of it
all,--the miserable end!" With that thought she shut her slender hand,
and struck it down hard, the blood almost starting from the driven nails
and bruised flesh, unheeding; though a little space thereafter she
smiled, beholding it, and muttered, "So--the drop of savage blood is
telling at last!"

Presently she was gone. It was a pleasant spot to which her aunt took
her,--one of the pretty little villages scattered up and down the long
sweep of the Hudson. Pleasant people they were too,--these English
friends of Mrs. Lancaster,--who made her welcome, but did not intrude
upon the solitude which they saw she desired.

Sabbath morning they all went to the little chapel, and left her, as she
wished, alone. Being so alone, after hearing their adieus, she went up
to her room and sat down to devote herself once again to sorrowful
contemplation,--not because she would, but because she must.

Poor girl! the bright spring sunshine streamed over her where she
sat;--not a cloud in the sky, not a dimming of mist or vapor on all the
hills, and the broad river-sweep which, placid and beautiful, rolle