I have sinned, cannot my sufferings
atone for it?--the evil, if evil there has been, was involuntary; the
penitence has been deep and earnest; surely the angels watching over me
will not let it be without avail.

* * * * *

"Great heavens! will this heart never have rest--will years do nothing
for me? Ralph is now a man; Lina, one of the most lovely creatures I
ever saw. These two children, whose infant kisses seem, even now, upon
my lips, have sprung up into sudden youth, and seem ready to escape my
love. Yesterday, Lina came to me with a world of innocent blushes, and
hung about my chair, as if longing to whisper some secret into my ear,
yet without the courage to speak. I wondered what the child wanted, but
would not force her confidence.

"I thank God, oh! I thank my God that I am alive. The terrible shock of
that night is still through my frame. I have been so close to death,
that the vitality at my heart seems unreal. Last night I was hurled into
the depths of the river, that is even now rushing onward to the ocean so
near to my window, that the eternal sweep of its waters haunt me like a
threat of death.

"He saved me--or rather they--for Ben Benson was in the midst of the
storm, resolute, like the other. I must have been dead for a time, for,
when my memory came back, it seemed as if I had forgotten all these
miserable years of married life, and was upon that heaving raft again,
with his arms around me, and whispering those low, passionate words in
my ear. Why did that dream come back then? Was it to lay my heart open,
and reveal to me how little prayer and time have done to wrest this
first and last love from my heart?"

CHAPTER LVII.

ZILLAH.

As General Harrington hurried through his wife's journal, his eyes grew
bright and cold, like steel when the sun strikes it; his lips, always so
soft and sensual in their expression, became rigid with passion, and
clung together hardened by the silent rage that burned in the depths of
his heart. Had Mabel proved herself vicious or unprincipled in the book
so cruelly purloined, he might have forgiven it; but here the struggle
to love him had been so great, that it wounded his self-love in every
fibre. The struggle to love him--General Harrington, the invincible, the
adored of so many hearts! "He would soon be an old man, and then the
friendship, which was all her heart could ever give, would content him.
_He_ an old man--he