dge you, and that you have already
much to bear, that I do as you ask me, and say, 'Philip, from my heart
I forgive you, as I trust that the Almighty may forgive me.'"

He flung himself upon his knees before her, and tried to take her
hand. "You do not know how you have humbled me," he groaned.

She gazed at him with pity.

"I am sorry," she said; "I did not wish to humble you. I have one word
more to say, and then I must go. I have just bid my last earthly
farewell to--your wife. My farewell to you must be as complete as
that, as complete as though the grave had already swallowed one of us.
We have done with each other for ever. I do not think that I shall
come back here. In my waking moments your name shall never willingly
pass my lips again. I will say it for the last time now. _Philip,
Philip, Philip_, whom I chose to love out of all the world, I pray God
that He will take me, or deaden the edge of what I suffer, and that He
may never let my feet cross your path or my eyes fall upon your face
again."

In another second she had passed out of the room and out of his life.

That night, or rather just before dawn on the following morning,
Hilda, knowing that her end was very near, sent for her husband.

"Go quickly, doctor," she said. "I shall die at dawn."

The doctor found him seated in the same spot where Maria Lee had left
him.

"What, more misery!" he said, when he had told his errand. "I cannot
bear it. There is a curse upon me--death and wickedness, misery and
death!"

"You must come if you wish to see your wife alive."

"I will come;" and he rose and followed him.

A sad sight awaited him. The moment of the grey dawn was drawing near,
and, by his wife's request, a window had been unshuttered, that her
dimmed eyes might once more look upon the light. On the great bed in
the centre of the room lay Hilda, whose life was now quickly draining
from her, and by her side was placed the sleeping infant. She was
raised and supported on either side by pillows, and her unbound golden
hair fell around her shoulders, enclosing her face as in a frame. Her
pallid countenance seemed touched with an awful beauty that had not
belonged to it in life, whilst in her eyes was that dread and
prescient gaze which sometimes come to those who are about to solve
death's mystery.

By the side of the bed knelt Mr. Fraser, the clergyman of the parish,
repeating in an earnest tone the prayers for the dying, whilst the
sad-f