heiress as
well as a great beauty, and people of that sort, I've found, mostly get
listened to when they speak. When the door shut I felt as if I'd seen
the wings of an angel flit through it, and the prison grew darker and
darker like the place of lost souls.

Chapter 51

One day I was told that a lady wanted to see me. When the door of the
cell opened who should walk in but Aileen! I didn't look to have seen
her. I didn't bother my head about who was coming. What did it matter,
as I kept thinking, who came or who went for the week or two that was to
pass before the day? Yes, the day, that Thursday, when poor Dick Marston
would walk over the threshold of his cell, and never walk over one
again.

The warder--him that stopped with me day and night--every man in the
condemned cell has to be watched like that--stepped outside the door and
left us together. We both looked at one another. She was dressed all in
black, and her face was that pale I hardly knew her at first. Then she
said, 'Oh, Dick--my poor Dick! is this the way we meet?' and flings
herself into my arms. How she cried and sobbed, to be sure. The tears
ran down her cheeks like rain, and every time the leg-irons rattled she
shook and trembled as if her heart was breaking.

I tried to comfort her; it was no use.

'Let me cry on, Dick,' she said; 'I have not shed a tear since I first
heard the news--the miserable truth that has crushed all our vain hopes
and fancies; my heart has nearly burst for want of relief. This will do
me good. To think--to think that this should be the end of all! But
it is just! I cannot dare to doubt Heaven's mercy. What else could
we expect, living as we all did--in sin--in mortal sin? I am punished
rightly.'

She told me all about poor mother's death. She never held up her head
after she heard of Jim's death. She never said a hard word about any
one. It was God's will, she thought, and only for His mercy things
might have gone worse. The only pleasure she had in her last days was
in petting Jim's boy. He was a fine little chap, and had eyes like his
father, poor old Jim! Then Aileen broke down altogether, and it was a
while before she could speak again.

Jeanie was the same as she had been from the first, only so quiet they
could hardly know how much she felt. She wouldn't leave the little
cottage where she had been so happy with Jim, and liked to work in
the chair opposite to where Jim used to sit and smoke his pipe