"They tell me, that, after that day, sickness laid you low, but only strengthened the principles for which you had martyred your affections. They tell me, that, in watching her child, your mother grew ill, and that you rose from sickness to be her nurse, and that you managed her affairs, and once more became the light of that loved home; they tell me poverty came, year by year, and that the little which had been saved became the prey, of a rapacious woman. That then came sickness, and trial, and death, in all its gloom--your home destroyed, nothing left but blackened ruins to remind you of the past. I know that you have since been subject to a thousand little vexations, and annoyances; a cold welcome, and a zealous watch. Now, tell me, have you never repented the hour which parted us?" Mabel looked up timidly. "Nay, never fear me; I can bear the truth, now." "No, Henry; you know I have never repented." "Ah, well I do," he said; "there could not have been such an angel calm round your whole being, had there been an unsettled principle within. "Now, listen; when I turned my back upon Aston, as I believed, for ever, in my mad fury, I might have kept my purpose, had you turned upon me, in your beauty, and spurned me as I had spurned you; but that deep, beseeching look, that prostrate form clinging to the earth in its wretchedness, but, without a frown or reproach for me--I carried it away--that last glance of yours; it haunted me, and would not let me go, though I turned upon it in fury, and would have beaten it madly back. "I need not tell you with what haste I exchanged my place in the English army, to one in a regiment starting for India; or, how I fought upon its burning plains, amongst the brave and the victorious. Even then, that last look pursued me. I studied with the learned, in Eastern lore. I was praised for my knowledge. Learning and enterprise were my pursuits--my society, the bold, and free-thinking; and my mind and imagination unfettered. But, what the world calls vice, that I knew not--there was something in the long forgotten, but not unfelt, impressions of childhood, and a mother's purity and love, that kept me back from that--and, while my charity was profuse, and my hand dealt bountifully to mankind, I proudly turned upon the professors of religion, and, as I held their weak points up to scandal, I bade them acknowledge the superiority of my moral code." "Oh, Henry, say no more," cried Mabel. "Do not shrink from me, because my confession is unreserved, but hear it to the very end. All this time, I forgot that pride and malice were in my heart, though I did sometimes feel what I have since seen expressed by Luther: 'An evil conscience is like a tormenting spirit, it is alarmed in the midst of outward prosperity.'