"You have employed your solitary hours so well, my dear Ellen," she said, as, when the child awoke and looked anxiously toward her--she kissed her cheek with even more than her usual fondness--"that I scarcely require your assurance of repentance or promises of amendment. When you have taken some coffee, and think you are well enough to listen to me, I will read you an illustration of the fearful sin of falsehood from the Old Testament, which I do not think I have yet pointed out to you. Ananias and Sapphira, I see you remember." And when Ellen had taken the delicious cup of coffee, which her aunt had ordered should be ready for her directly she awoke, and sat up, though her head was still so weak it required the support of a pillow, yet she seemed so revived, so almost happy, from the mesmeric effect of that warm, fond kiss, that her aunt did not hesitate to continue the lesson she was so anxious to impress, while the mind and heart were softened to receive it. She turned to the fourth chapter of the second book of Kings, and after briefly relating the story of Naaman--for she did not wish to divert Ellen's attention from the one important subject, by giving any new ideas--she read from the 20th verse to the end, and so brought the nature of Gehazi's sin and its awful punishment, at the hand of God himself (for the prophet was merely an instrument of the Eternal, he had no power in himself to call the disease of leprosy on his servant) to Ellen's mind, that she never forgot it. "Do you think Elisha knew where he had been, and what he had done, before he asked him?" she ventured timidly to inquire, as her aunt ceased; "Gehazi had told a falsehood already to Naaman. Do you think God punished that or his falsehood to Elisha?" "Most probably he punished both, my love. Elisha no doubt knew how his servant had been employed in his absence, in fact he tells him so"--and she read the 26th verse again--"but he asked him whence he had come, to give him an opportunity for a full confession of his first sin, which then, no doubt would, after some slight rebuke, have been pardoned. It was a very great fault at first, but the mercy of God was then, as it is now, so infinite so forgiving, that, had Elisha's question recalled Gehazi to a sense of his great guilt and excited real repentance, his punishment would have been averted. But his aggravated and repeated falsehood called down on him a chastisement most terrible even to think about. Leprosy was not merely a dreadful disease in itself, but it cut him off, from all the blessings and joys not only of social life but of domestic; because, as God had said it should cleave to his seed as well as to himself, he could never find any one who would dare to love him, and he must have been compelled to lonely misery all his life." "It was a very dreadful punishment," repeated Ellen, fearfully.