are you going, sir?" said May, kneeling down, and lifting
Helen's burning head to her breast.

"To destruction!" he replied, in a low, bitter tone.

"Do not dare leave us, sir," said May, in a commanding tone. "Help me
to lift this penitent woman--so deserving now of your tender
support--to the bed, and go for a physician and Father Fabian. Bring
both immediately, for I believe a brain fever is coming on."

"Would that she had died before! Would that she had died ere my trust
and love were so cruelly shaken!" he exclaimed wildly, as he raised her
lifeless form from the floor, and laid it on the bed.

"Oh, Walter Jerrold! are you mad? To wish she had died without
repentance--without proving that her nature, by rising through grace
above the guilt of sin, is worthy of your highest esteem and love? Go,
sir, unless you wish your servants to become acquainted with the whole
affair, and to-morrow hear it recited at the corners of the streets by
every newsboy in the city. I shall have to ring for assistance."

"Give me that will," he said, moodily.

"For what?"

"To place it in Mr. Fielding's hands, and tell him the disgraceful
story, lest he afterwards think I have been an accessory to Helen's
guilt," he replied.

"No, sir. It is entirely my affair, and I wish no interference. I
will arrange it all myself, and be more tender of you and yours than
you, in your savage mood, could be," replied May, holding the will
firmly to her bosom.

When the physician came, he, after a careful examination, pronounced
the case to be a violent attack of brain-fever. Helen was at times in
a raving delirium; then she would lie for hours without sense or
motion. Sometimes she implored in moving terms her husband's
forgiveness; then, when the violence of the paroxysm was passing away,
she would whisper, "Lead me, Mother! Lead me through this howling
wilderness. Oh, save--save me! I am pursued. Hold me, my Mother--my
sorrowful Mother!"

May could only follow implicitly the doctor's directions, and weep and
pray. Father Fabian came--heard the story of her repentance, and
desire to return to God; then returned to wrestle in earnest prayer at
the altar that she--the penitent one--might be restored long enough to
be purified and consoled by the Sacraments of the Church. For long
weary days and nights her life was despaired of. Her husband, the
shadow of his former self, never left her bedside. He had loved her
well, with