Calantha was carried to a small room, and laid upon a bed. The waiter said that Lord Avondale was still at the inn. The nurse hastened to call him. He was surprised; but not displeased when he heard that Lady Avondale was arrived. He rushed towards her apartment. Sir Richard was with him. “By G—d, Avondale, if you forgive her, I will never see you more. Whilst I live, she shall never dwell in my house.” “Then mine shall shelter her,” said Lord Avondale, breaking from Sir Richard’s grasp: “this is too much;” and with an air of kindness, with a manner gentle and affectionate, Lord Avondale now entered, and approached his wife. “Calantha,” he said, “do not thus give way to the violence of your feelings. I wish not to appear stern.—My God! what is the matter?” “Your poor lady is dying,” said the nurse. “For the love of mercy, speak one gracious word to her.” “I will, I do,” said Lord Avondale, alarmed. “Calantha,” he whispered, without one reproach, “whatever have been your errors, turn here for shelter to a husband’s bosom. I will never leave you. Come here, thou lost one. Thou hast strayed from thy guide and friend. But were it to seal my ruin, I must, I do pardon thee. Oh! come again, unhappy, lost Calantha. Heaven forgive you, as I do, from my soul.—What means this silence—this agonizing suspense?” “She faints,” cried the nurse. “May God have mercy!” said Lady Avondale. “There is something on my mind. I wish to speak—to tell—your kindness kills me. I repent all.—Oh, is it too late?”—It was.—For amendment, for return from error, for repentance it was too late. Death struck her at that moment. One piercing shriek proclaimed his power, as casting up her eyes with bitterness and horror, she fixed them upon Lord Avondale. That piercing shriek had escaped from a broken heart. It was the last chord of nature, stretched to the utmost till it broke. A cold chill spread itself over her limbs. In the struggle of death, she had thrown her arms around her husband’s neck; and when her tongue cleaved to her mouth, and her lips were cold and powerless, her eyes yet bright with departing life had fixed themselves earnestly upon him, as if imploring pardon for the past. Oh, resist not that look, Avondale! it is the last. Forgive her—pity her: and if they call it weakness in thee thus to weep, tell them that man is weak, and death dissolves the keenest enmities. Oh! tell them, that there is something in a last look from those whom we have once loved, to which the human soul can never be insensible. But when that look is such as was Calantha’s, and when the last prayer her dying lips expressed was for mercy, who shall dare to refuse and to resist it? It might have rent a harder bosom than thine. It may ascend and plead before the throne of mercy. It was the prayer of a dying penitent:—it was the agonizing look of a breaking heart.