ught us together. I now look into your face, and I tell
you that I see guilt and throuble there--ay, an' the dark work of a
conscience that's gnawin' your heart both night and day."

Whilst speaking, she held her face within about a foot of Nelly's, into
which she looked with an expression so searching and dreadful in its
penetration, that the other shrunk back, and felt for a moment as if
subdued by a superior spirit. It was, however, only for a moment; the
sense of her subjection passed away, and she resumed that hard and
imperturbable manner, for which she had been all her life so remarkable,
unless, like Etna and Vesuvius, she burst out of this seeming coldness
into fire and passion. There, however, they stood looking sternly into
each others' faces, as if each felt anxious that the other should quail
before her gaze--the stranger, in order that her impressions might be
confirmed, and the prophet's wife, that she should, by the force of her
strong will, fling off those traces of inquietude which she knew very
well were often too legible in her countenance.

"You are wrong," said Nelly, "an' have only mistaken my face for a
lookin'-glass. It was your own you saw, all it was your own you wor
spaking of--for if ever I saw a face that publishes an ill-spent life on
the part of its owner, yours is it."

"Care an' sorrow I have had," replied the other, "an' the sin that
causes sorrow, I grant; but there's somethin' that's weighin' down your
heart, an' that won't let you rest until you give it up. You needn't
deny it, for you can't hide it--hard your eye is, but it's not clear,
and I see that it quivers, and is unaisy before mine."

"I said you're mistaken," replied the other; "but even supposin' you wor
not, how is it your business whether my mind is aisy or not? You won't
have my sins to answer for."

"I know that," said the stranger; "and God sees my own account will be
too long and too heavy, I doubt. I now beg of you, as you hope to meet
judgment, to think of what I said. Look into your own heart, and it will
tell you whether I am right or whether I am wrong. Consult your husband,
and if he has any insight at all into futurity, he must tell you that,
unless you clear your conscience, you'll have a hard death-bed of it."

"You're goin' to Condy Dalton's," replied Nelly, with much coolness, but
whether assumed or not it is difficult to say; "look into his face, and
try what you can find there. At any rate, report h