"Do you say I am free? Not bound to anyone? Untrammelled all this time that I have lived in imaginary slavery, oh, how much I have suf--" but she checked the impulse that bade her murmur, and said instead, "because I have done wrong myself, I can forgive. _I_ know how the guilty heart craves for pardon, how the loaded conscience aches for relief, and therefore, you can take my entire forgiveness back to the penitent who asks it. After all," she continued, in a sort of soliloquy, "forgiveness _is_ easier than revenge." "You are a noble little soul," said Guy, touched by the piety and fervor of this blighted little heart. "Ah, sir! it is not that," Fifine said regretfully, "I might have been that, if I had lived contentedly among the comforts, where God had so generously placed me, and not sighed to adopt a world of sin and shame, rather than sacrifice it. I can never be that now. I have killed my poor loving father: I have blighted my life--there is only penance and atonement now to bid me hope," then passing her hand wearily over her eyes, she exclaimed in a long sigh, "So strange, all this! I thought that ugly chapter was over and done with, for everyone but me. And this man that sent you, who is he?" queried she. In words as brief and clear as possible, Guy told her the story of his night by Nicholas Bencroft's bed-side, dwelling emphatically upon the pitiful effects that remorse and reverses had left, where innocence and prosperity had once been. The girl's face clouded at intervals, as she listened to the strange, touching recital, and she felt a sympathy in the end, for this other poor victim, who, like herself, had been led into evil, blindfolded. After a long, long interval, Guy rose to depart, not however, without having made every arrangement with Fifine that was necessary to render her justice, and give Vivian Standish his due. Even towards this latter, she would not now indulge feelings of her old hatred. She asked that he be dealt with as leniently as possible, "for, sir," she argued, "the wicked are wicked only because of their weakness. They are _so_ much weaker than the good; and just as the man of physical strength is merciful with one who is physically weak, so should the rule apply to moral strength, and let him who can brave temptation deal gently with the poor, weak sinner." And then they parted to the time, Fifine having agreed to seek permission to enable her to take any active steps that should be deemed necessary for the rendering of calm, quiet justice to Vivian Standish's victims. CHAPTER XXXIV. When Peace and Mercy, banish'd from the plain, Sprung on the viewless winds to heaven again All, all forsook the friendless, guilty mind, But Hope the charmer, hunger'd still behind. --_Campbell_.