eeling had its place in her bosom, as
without doubt it had, then was it a hopeless lingerer, long after the
sunshine and zephyr had gone which first awakened it into bloom and
flower. She knelt beside the inanimate form of her old parent, shedding
no tear, and uttering no sigh. Tears would have poorly expressed the wo
which at that moment she felt; and the outlaw, growing impatient of the
dumb spectacle, now ventured to approach and interrupt her. She rose,
meekly and without reluctance, as he spoke; with a manner which said as
plainly as words could have, said--'Command, and I obey. Bid me go even
now, at midnight, on a perilous journey, over and into foreign lands,
and I go without murmur or repining.' She was a heart-stricken, a
heart-broken, and abused woman--and yet she loved still, and loved her
destroyer.

"Ellen," said he, taking her hand, "your mother was a Christian--a
strict worshipper--one who, for the last few years of her life, seldom
put the Bible out of her hands; and yet she cursed me in her very soul
as she went out of the world."

"Guy, Guy, speak not so, I pray you. Spare me this cruelty, and say not
for the departed spirit what it surely never would have said of itself."

"But it did so say, Ellen, and of this I am satisfied. Hear me, girl. I
know something of mankind, and womankind too, and I am not often
mistaken in the expression of human faces, and certainly was not
mistaken in hers. When, in the last paroxysm, you knelt beside her with
your head down upon her hand and in her grasp, and as I approached her,
her eyes, which feebly threw up the film then rapidly closing over them,
shot out a most angry glare of hatred and reproof; while her lips
parted--I could see, though she could articulate no word--with
involutions which indicated the curse that she could not speak."

"Think not so, I pray you. She had much cause to curse, and often would
she have done so, but for my sake she did not. She would call me a poor
fool, that so loved the one who had brought misery and shame to all of
us; but her malediction was arrested, and she said it not. Oh, no! she
forgave you--I know she did--heard you not the words which she uttered
at the last?"

"Yes, yes--but no matter. We must now talk of other things, Ellen; and
first of all, you must know, then, I am about to be married."

Had a bolt from the crossbow at that moment penetrated into her heart,
the person he addressed could not have been more trans