did it
occur to him now. He had been there so often that the place gave him no
sense of danger. Nor had that peril,--as it was thought afterwards by
those who most closely made inquiry on the matter,--ever occurred to
her. She had not brought him there that she might frighten him with
that danger, or that she might avenge herself by the power which it gave
her. But now the idea flashed across her maddened mind. "Miscreant," she
said. And she bore him back to the very edge of the precipice.

"You'll have me over the cliff," he exclaimed hardly even yet putting
out his strength against her.

"And so I will, by the help of God. Now think of her! Now think of her!"
And as she spoke she pressed him backwards towards his fall. He had
power enough to bend his knee, and to crouch beneath her grasp on to the
loose crumbling soil of the margin of the rocks. He still held her by
her cuff and it seemed for a moment as though she must go with him. But,
on a sudden, she spurned him with her foot on the breast, the rag of
cloth parted in his hand, and the poor wretch tumbled forth alone into
eternity.

That was the end of Frederic Neville, Earl of Scroope, and the end, too,
of all that poor girl's hopes in this world. When you stretch yourself
on the edge of those cliffs and look down over the abyss on the sea
below it seems as though the rocks were so absolutely perpendicular,
that a stone dropped with an extended hand would fall amidst the waves.
But in such measurement the eye deceives itself, for the rocks in truth
slant down; and the young man, as he fell, struck them again and again;
and at last it was a broken mangled corpse that reached the blue waters
below.

Her Kate was at last avenged. The woman stood there in her solitude for
some minutes thinking of the thing she had done. The man had injured
her,--sorely,--and she had punished him. He had richly deserved the
death which he had received from her hands. In these minutes, as
regarded him, there was no remorse. But how should she tell the news
to her child? The blow which had thrust him over would, too probably,
destroy other life than his. Would it not be better that her girl should
so die? What could prolonged life give her that would be worth her
having? As for herself,--in these first moments of her awe she took no
thought of her own danger. It did not occur to her that she might tell
how the man had ventured too near the edge and had fallen by mischance.
As regard