“‘A woman would have known why, without asking,’ she replied. ‘A woman would have understood that I shrank from a public confession of my shameful past life. A woman would have remembered what reasons I had for pitying the man who loved me, and for accepting any responsibility rather than associate his memory, before the world, with an unworthy passion for a degraded creature, ending in an act of suicide. Even if I had made that cruel sacrifice, would public opinion have believed such a person as I am--against the evidence of a medical man, and the verdict of a jury? No, Mr. Morris! I said nothing, and I was resolved to say nothing, so long as the choice of alternatives was left to me. On the day when Mr. Mirabel implored me to save him, that choice was no longer mine--and you know what I did. And now again when suspicion (after all the long interval that had passed) has followed and found that innocent man, you know what I have done. What more do you ask of me?’ “‘Your pardon,’ I said, ‘for not having understood you--and a last favor. May I repeat what I have heard to the one person of all others who ought to know, and who must know, what you have told me?’ “It was needless to hint more plainly that I was speaking of Emily. Miss Jethro granted my request. “‘It shall be as you please,’ she answered. ‘Say for me to _his_ daughter, that the grateful remembrance of her is my one refuge from the thoughts that tortured me, when we spoke together on her last night at school. She has made this dead heart of mine feel a reviving breath of life, when I think of her. Never, in our earthly pilgrimage, shall we meet again--I implore her to pity and forget me. Farewell, Mr. Morris; farewell forever.’ “I confess that the tears came into my eyes. When I could see clearly again, I was alone in the room.” CHAPTER LXVII. THE TRUE CONSOLATION. Emily closed the pages which told her that her father had died by his own hand. Cecilia still held her tenderly embraced. By slow degrees, her head dropped until it rested on her friend’s bosom. Silently she suffered. Silently Cecilia bent forward, and kissed her forehead. The sounds that penetrated to the room were not out of harmony with the time. From a distant house the voices of children were just audible, singing the plaintive melody of a hymn; and, now and then, the breeze blew the first faded leaves of autumn against the window. Neither of the girls knew how long the minutes followed each other uneventfully, before there was a change. Emily raised her head, and looked at Cecilia. “I have one friend left,” she said. “Not only me, love--oh, I hope not only me!” “Yes. Only you.” “I want to say something, Emily; but I am afraid of hurting you.”