uctors--breed him up in
nobleness and truth--and let not his early nurture, and the care with
which I have sought to instil into his mind principles of honour and
virtue, be utterly lost. Let his happiness be the pledge of my dutiful
fulfilment of the task I have undertaken; and may God desert me and him,
when I fail through negligence or hardness of heart.

"And if at times the stigma of his birth should present itself to
irritate your mind against his helpless innocence, as alas! I
have latterly witnessed, smite him not, Greville, in your guilty
wrath--remember he is come of gentle blood, even on his mother's
side--and ask yourself to _whom_ we owe our degradation, and from whose
quiver the arrow was launched against us? And now farewell--may the
Almighty enlighten and forgive you--and if in this address there appears
a trace of bitterness, do not ascribe it to any uncharitable feelings,
but look back upon the past, and think on what I was--on what I am.
Consider whether ever woman loved or trusted as I have done, or was ever
more cruelly betrayed? Oh! Greville, Greville!--did I not regard you
with an affection too intense for my happiness! did I not confide in you
with a reverence, a veneration unmeet to be lavished on a creature
of clay? But you have broken the fragile idol of my worship before my
eyes--and the after-path of my life is dark with fear and loneliness.
But be it so; my soul was proud of its good gifts--and now that I am
stricken to the dust, its vanity is laid bare to my sight--haply, 'it is
good for me that I have been afflicted.'--Farewell for ever."

The conditions of this letter were mutually and strictly fulfilled;
but the mental struggle sustained by Lord Greville, his humiliation on
witnessing the saintlike self-devotion of Helen Percy, combined with the
necessity which rendered it expedient to accept her proffered sacrifice,
were too much for his frame. In less than a year after his return to
Silsea, he died--a prey to remorse.

Previous to his decease, in contemplation of the nobleness of mind
which would probably induce the nominal Lady Greville to renounce
his succession, he framed two testamentary acts. By one of these, he
acknowledged the nullity of his second marriage, but bequeathed to Helen
and her child all that the law of the land enabled him to bestow; by the
other he referred to Helen only as his lawful wife, and to her son as
his representative and successor; adding to their le