hat there was but little to which she could look forward,
even though the verdict of the jury should be in her favour; but all
that she regarded as removed from her by a great interval. She had
promised that Lucius should know all after the trial,--that he should
know all, so that the property might be restored to its rightful
owner; and she was fully resolved that this promise should be kept.
But nevertheless there was a long interval. If she could battle
through this first danger,--if by the skill of her lawyers she could
avert the public declaration of her guilt, might not the chances of
war still take some further turn in her favour? And thus, though
her face was pale with suffering and thin with care, though she
had realised the fact that nothing short of a miracle could save
her,--still she would hope for that miracle.

But the absolute bodily labour which she was forced to endure was so
hard upon her! She would dress herself, and smooth her brow for the
trial; but that dressing herself, and that maintenance of a smooth
brow would impose upon her an amount of toil which would almost
overtask her physical strength. O reader, have you ever known what it
is to rouse yourself and go out to the world on your daily business,
when all the inner man has revolted against work, when a day of rest
has seemed to you to be worth a year of life? If she could have
rested now, it would have been worth many years of life,--worth all
her life. She longed for rest,--to be able to lay aside the terrible
fatigue of being ever on the watch. From the burden of that necessity
she had never been free since her crime had been first committed.
She had never known true rest. She had not once trusted herself to
sleep without the feeling that her first waking thought would be
one of horror, as the remembrance of her position came upon her. In
every word she spoke, in every trifling action of her life, it was
necessary that she should ask herself how that word and action might
tell upon her chances of escape. She had striven to be true and
honest,--true and honest with the exception of that one deed. But
that one deed had communicated its poison to her whole life. Truth
and honesty,--fair, unblemished truth and open-handed, fearless
honesty,--had been impossible to her. Before she could be true and
honest it would be necessary that she should go back and cleanse
herself from the poison of that deed. Such cleansing is to be done.
Men have sinne