She it was who had
done it all,--she, whose memory did not spare her one fault, who
remembered everything. But when she came to that last frivolity of her
old age, and saw for the first time how she had played with the future
of the child whom she had brought up, and abandoned to the hardest
fate,--for nothing, for folly, for a jest,--the horror and bitterness of
the thought filled her mind to overflowing. In the first anguish of that
recollection she had to go forth, receiving no word of comfort in respect
to it, meeting only with a look of sadness and compassion, which went to
her very heart. She came forth as if she had been driven away, but not by
any outward influence, by the force of her own miserable sensations. "I
will write," she said to herself, "and tell them; I will go--" And then
she stopped short, remembering that she could neither go nor write,--that
all communication with the world she had left was closed. Was it all
closed? Was there no way in which a message could reach those who
remained behind? She caught the first passer-by whom she passed, and
addressed him piteously. "Oh, tell me,--you have been longer here than
I,--cannot one send a letter, a message, if it were only a single word?"

"Where?" he said, stopping and listening; so that it began to seem
possible to her that some such expedient might still be within her reach.

"It is to England," she said, thinking he meant to ask as to which
quarter of the world.

"Ah," he said, shaking his head, "I fear that it is impossible."

"But it is to set something right, which out of mere inadvertence, with
no ill meaning,"--No, no (she repeated to herself), no ill-meaning--none!
"Oh sir, for charity! tell me how I can find a way. There must--there
must be some way."

He was greatly moved by the sight of her distress. "I am but a stranger
here," he said; "I may be wrong. There are others who can tell you
better; but"--and he shook his head sadly--"most of us would be so
thankful, if we could, to send a word, if it were only a single word, to
those we have left behind, that I fear, I fear--"

"Ah!" cried Lady Mary, "but that would be only for the tenderness;
whereas this is for justice and for pity, and to do away with a great
wrong which I did before I came here."

"I am very sorry for you," he said; but shook his head once more as he
went away. She was more careful next time, and chose one who had the look
of much experience and knowledge of the pl