ogether so with her. Had things gone differently with
her it might afterwards have been said that she had gone through the
fire unscathed. But the beast had set his foot upon her, and when the
temptation came it was too much for her. Not for herself would she
have sinned, or have robbed that old man, who had been to her a kind
master. But when a child was born to her, her eyes were blind, and
she could not see that wealth ill gotten for her child would be
as sure a curse as wealth ill gotten for herself. She remembered
Rebekah, and with the cunning of a second Rebekah she filched a
world's blessing for her baby. Now she thought of all this as
pictures of that life which might have been hers passed before her
mind's eye.

And they were pleasant pictures, had they not burnt into her very
soul as she looked at them. How sweet had been that drawing-room at
The Cleeve, as she sat there in luxurious quiet with her new friend!
How sweet had been that friendship with a woman pure in all her
thoughts, graceful to the eye, and delicate in all her ways! She knew
now, as she thought of this, that to her had been given the power
to appreciate such delights as these. How full of charm to her
would have been that life, in which there had been so much of
true, innocent affection;--had the load ever been absent from her
shoulders! And then she thought of Sir Peregrine, with his pleasant,
ancient manner and truth of heart, and told herself that she could
have been happy with the love of even so old a man as that,--had that
burden been away from her! But the burden had never been away--never
could be away. Then she thought once more of her stern but just son,
and as she bowed her head and kissed the rod, she prayed that her
release might come to her soon.

And now we will say farewell to her, and as we do so the chief
interest of our tale will end. I may, perhaps be thought to owe an
apology to my readers in that I have asked their sympathy for a woman
who had so sinned as to have placed her beyond the general sympathy
of the world at large. If so, I tender my apology, and perhaps feel
that I should confess a fault. But as I have told her story that
sympathy has grown upon myself till I have learned to forgive her,
and to feel that I too could have regarded her as a friend. Of her
future life I will not venture to say anything. But no lesson is
truer than that which teaches us to believe that God does temper the
wind to the shorn lamb.