confront the uncertain
future with my cheerful submission and my steadfast hope."

He intrusted me with that message, and gave me his hand. So we parted.

I agreed with him, I admired him; but my faith seemed to want sustaining
power, as compared with his faith. On his own showing (as it appeared
to me), there would be two forces in a state of conflict in the child's
nature as she grew up--inherited evil against inculcated good. Try as I
might, I failed to feel the Minister's comforting conviction as to which
of the two would win.

CHAPTER IX. THE GOVERNOR RECEIVES A VISIT.

A few days after the good man had left us, I met with a serious
accident, caused by a false step on the stone stairs of the prison.

The long illness which followed this misfortune, and my removal
afterward (in the interests of my recovery) to a milder climate than the
climate of England, obliged me to confide the duties of governor of the
prison to a representative. I was absent from my post for rather more
than a year. During this interval no news reached me from my reverend
friend.

Having returned to the duties of my office, I thought of writing to the
Minister. While the proposed letter was still in contemplation, I was
informed that a lady wished to see me. She sent in her card. My visitor
proved to be the Minister's wife.

I observed her with no ordinary attention when she entered the room.

Her dress was simple; her scanty light hair, so far as I could see it
under her bonnet, was dressed with taste. The paleness of her lips, and
the faded color in her face, suggested that she was certainly not in
good health. Two peculiarities struck me in her personal appearance.
I never remembered having seen any other person with such a singularly
narrow and slanting forehead as this lady presented; and I was
impressed, not at all agreeably, by the flashing shifting expression in
her eyes. On the other hand, let me own that I was powerfully attracted
and interested by the beauty of her voice. Its fine variety of compass,
and its musical resonance of tone, fell with such enchantment on the
ear, that I should have liked to put a book of poetry into her hand, and
to have heard her read it in summer-time, accompanied by the music of a
rocky stream.

The object of her visit--so far as she explained it at the
outset--appeared to be to offer her congratulations on my recovery,
and to tell me that her husband had assumed the charge of a church in