So ran the deep contrition of her thought, with mournful-running tears. Sorrowfully weeping, she turned her beautiful and haggard face to the table near her, and took from thence a single faded rose. It had been large and fresh in full-blown crimson beauty, when he had given it to her, a little week ago. Pledge of a love then in its seeming hour of radiant victory, it was the withered token of a love all dead and disenchanted now. Weeping, she pressed it to her lips; she kissed it with gentle and passionate kisses. The sweet, dry odor of the soft petals stole to her brain, with the mournful memory of the vanished and delicious hour when the rose bloomed fresh in the lover’s giving hand, and his tender and gallant face was the rose of all the world to her. Dear rose, she murmured, memorial of hours when life was ecstasy, and heaven itself seemed cold and far—you are all that is left me now! I will keep you, I will love you, while life lasts, and when I die, they shall put you in my bosom, under the shroud, and lay us together in the grave. Gift of him I loved—of him I love forever—oh, Richard, Richard, you have wronged me, but I do not scorn you—you have killed me, but I do not hate you; I love you now; I love you, I forgive you, I bless you—with my last breath I shall forgive, and love and bless you! Murmuring the words, in an ecstasy of passionate fervor, her voice trembling, and the tears streaming from her eyes, she pressed the flower with both hands to her lips, and swooning slowly back upon the cushions, she lay motionless, a shape of glorious pallid beauty, sculptured upon the odorous dusk, as the moon was going down.