there with her head
bowed upon the table, in a sort of despairing stupor, unconscious of
everything but the overwhelming sense of intense misery.

Then came painful thoughts of her past life; her frequent quarrels with
her good sisters; her unkindness and neglect to her suffering mother;
her ingratitude to God; and the discontented repinings over her humble
lot, which had led to her present situation. She had sold herself for
money; and the wealth she had so criminally coveted, was the price of
blood, and from its envied possession no real enjoyment had flowed. The
poverty and discomfort of her mother's cottage were small, when compared
to the heart-crushing misery she at that moment endured.

Then she thought of her husband; thought of her selfish imprudence in
betraying his guilt--that in his approaching trial she must appear as a
principal witness against him; and that her testimony would, in all
probability, consign him to the scaffold.

She felt that, however great the magnitude of his crime, he had bitterly
repented of it long ago; that he had suffered untold agonies of remorse
and contrition; that his punishment had been more than his reason could
well bear; that he had suffered more from the pangs of conscience than
he ever could experience from the hands of man. All his kindness to her,
since the day she became his wife, returned to her with a sense of
tenderness she never had felt for him before. She never suspected how
deeply she loved him, till she was forced to part from him for ever: her
soul melted within her, and she shed floods of tears.

She saw him alone in the dark dungeon, surrounded by the frightful
phantoms of a guilty conscience, with no pitying voice to soothe his
overwhelming grief, or speak words of peace or comfort to his tortured
spirit, and she thought, "I will go to him to-morrow; I will at least
say to him, I pity you, my dear unhappy husband. I pray you to forgive
me for the great evil I have brought upon you."

With this thought uppermost in her mind, the miserable Sophy, overcome
by her long fast, and worn out by the excitement of the past day, fell
into a profound sleep.

And lo, in the black darkness of that dreary room, she thought she
beheld a bright shining light. It spread and brightened, and flowed all
around her like the purest moonlight, and the centre condensed into a
female form, smiling and beautiful, which advancing, laid a soft hand
upon her head, and whispered in t