He held a letter in his hand; the fingers which traced its trembling lines were now lying in a nameless grave. A worn-out, wearied woman, prematurely old, and glad to lay down her head in that one place where the weary are at rest, was the writer of those earnest, living words. The Laird of Mossgray did not remember that she was old--the past years were in this moment a fable and a dream to him. He thought of Lilias only as he saw her last, enshrined in all the pure and gentle dignity of his young fancies; for Lilias was dead. And dying, she had revealed to the old man what she was. Not indeed the lofty lady of his dreaming days, but a gentle, chastened, meek woman, who knew now, and had long known, the worth of the generous heart she threw away. In the bitterness of his soul he had believed her an unsubstantial vision; but the faithful hand of death had brought back to him the true Lilias, worthy of the place he had given her in his best days. “I do not ask you to forgive me,” wrote the dying Lilias, “because I know that long ago you must have forgiven the witless girl’s heart that did itself so much more wrong than you. I did not know myself, my own slight, shallow, girlish self, and pardon me then, Adam Graeme, that I did not know you. Since then I have learned--what have I not learned that is bitter and sorrowful? Care, poverty, death, and miserable shames and humiliations, such as never crossed your path, have been the constant companions of mine: they are all ending now. I am going hence to my Lord, and to the children whom He took from me one by one, till my heart was well-nigh broken; but I cannot go till I make one prayer to you, one last entreaty for the sake of our youth. “I would not speak of the time when we last met; in pity to my bitter lot, and to the dead whose faults we lay with them in the grave to be forgotten, as I have laid Edward, and as stranger hands shall soon lay me, do not think of that time. I have one last treasure remaining to me, one last request to make, and there is no one in the world but you, whom I have wronged, to whom I can address my prayer. “Mossgray, I have a child; a friendless, unprotected, solitary girl, who will soon be left utterly alone. If I shrink from subjecting her to the cold charity of Walter’s wife, forgive me, because I am her mother. I know that Lilias is not what I was. I know that our subdued and clouded life has given to her youth a greater maturity than I had when I was her mother. I have fancied often that Lilias is what you thought me to be, and there has been a sad pleasure in the hope, that for her weak mother’s sake, your heart would melt to my child.