“Your daughter, madam, is I am afraid, paying a terrible price for charity to me.” “My daughter, sir, has been taught to consider it proper to discharge a duty and leave the consequences to Heaven. But are you aware, captain, that my daughter felt it a duty to acquaint me with an interesting account which you gave her of your own life?” “I gave her full permission to do so.” “I have come, having had the small-pox, to assist in the care of my daughter, and as far as possible, to supply her place by your bedside.” “I have not deserved this from Heaven or of men. Help me only to understand and do my duty, and you will complete the work which Amelia began.” In some conversation which Mrs. Bertrand had with Captain W. the next day, she alluded to his resolution to make reparation as far as possible for any injury he had inflicted on others. “Do you,” said she, “continue of that resolution?” “Increasingly so. And if now I could find where I might begin the work, I would divest myself at once, if necessary, of every dollar I possess to alleviate the suffering I have caused.” “Such a sacrifice can scarcely be required, it is certainly not necessary so far as I understand your situation.” “What then can I do—when shall I begin the _work_ of repentance?” “It is undoubtedly begun already in the resolve of restitution. I take that to be the essence of repentance, or rather the evidence of it.” “Am I then to recover, as the doctor assures me I shall? Am I to sit down in the enjoyment of my ample means, and in no way minister to the comfort of those whom my follies made miserable? My wife and child dead—and she, who should have been my wife, lost to me—dead perhaps likewise! I have by various means sought to find Amelia. I even put into a New York and a Boston paper an advertisement, which if it met her eye, would have assured her of my repentance; but, alas! I might repent, I might seek now to marry her, with the same selfish views which I had at first. I might even for _her_ sake now do what would be called justice by some, but what act of mine, however just, could compensate for the horrible outrage which I had committed, the gross insult, public, palpable, unpardonable, which I had offered to her? Yet I loved her, love her now, have ever loved her, and though I have sought refuge for my conscience in the clouds of infidelity, I have never ceased to love _her_ image in my heart, and that has saved me from the follies and vices to which my state of mind and my profession exposed me.”