her life burnt
down into the hollow socket--glimmering awhile--flared and reeled, and
then--one night, quietly and suddenly--went out! She entered on the
world of spirits, where all secrets show revealed; and there she read,
almost before she died--whilst yet the black curtain of eternity was
gradually rising to receive her--the innocence of good Maria, and the
deep-stained villany of John. Her last words--uttered supernaturally
from her quiescence, with the fervour of a visionary whose ken is more
than mortal--were "Look, look, Thomas!--beware of John. O poor, poor
innocent outcast!--O rich, rich heart of love--Maria! my Mari--a--!"

CHAPTER X.

HOW TO HELP ONE'S SELF.

Where then did they live, and how--that noble and calumniated couple?
They had done no wrong, nor even, as it seems to us, the semblance of
wrong, unless it be by having acquiesced in the foolishness of secresy,
and thus aided the contrivance of false witness; for aught else, their
only social error had been lack of business caution among business men.
Feeling generously themselves, they gave others credit for the like good
feeling; acting upon honourable impulse, they believed that other men
would act so too. Heart was the hindrance in their way;--too much
sensitiveness towards all about them; too swift a surrender of the
judgment to the affections: too imprudent a reliance upon other men of
the world; though, when they trusted to a father's love, and a brother's
honesty, prudence herself might have almost been dispensed with.
Machinations of the wicked and the shrewd hemmed them in to their
un-doing: and really, they, children more or less of affluent homes,
born and bred in plenty, who had moved all their lives long in circles
of comparative wealth and wastefulness, now seemed likely to come to the
galling want of necessary sustenance. Was it not to teach them deeper
feeling for the poor, if ever God again should give them riches? Was it
not, by poverty, to try those hearts which had passed so blamelessly
through all the ordeals and temptations of wealth, in order that they
worthily might wear the double crown given only to such as remain
unhardened by prosperity, unembittered by adversity? Was it not to
discipline our warm Maria's love, and to chasten her Henry's very
gentlemanly pride into the due Christian proportions--self-respect with
self-humiliation? Was it not, chiefest and best, to school their hearts
for heaven, and, by feeding