In the late lord's lifetime she was wretched enough--but with a numbing dulness which is its own anodyne. Moreover, as we discovered on his deathbed, the important secret, if important it were, had been shared between the two. A secret known to even one other person, whose feelings in the matter are similar to our own, is lightened by more than half its weight. He died. His widow was condemned to drag the chain alone--worse than alone, for yet one other person knew of it whose feelings were remote from friendly. The late lord's devil-may-care visage glanced sideways down with an eternal smirk from its frame upon the wall. He was dead. His breast was unburthened. He slept in peace, and there was his smiling counterfeit grinning at his unhappy partner. Did he sleep in peace? Oh! If she could have been sure of that! But no. Possibly he was enduring torments even worse than hers. As he lay choking between the confines of two worlds, perchance he had been allowed to see what was still concealed from her human ken--and then had cried out the warning--'Set right that wrong while you have the opportunity.' How horribly unjust seemed the retribution which pursued her! Her sin had been the negative one of living a long lie. If she had had courage to confess--to abase her stiff-necked pride--the wrong might have been set right with but little serious injury to any but herself. But my lord--the prime sinner--had encouraged this pride, declaring that there was no call for a great sacrifice--until the last moment when his eyes were opened, and he called out in his agony, 'Beware!' By that time the pride so long nurtured was become a second nature. She could not all of a sudden break through the ramparts of long usage. It was very well for him to cry 'Stand on the pillory,' when he was himself flitting beyond the reach of stone-throwing. It was very well for his odious concubine to cry 'Confess!' who would be no sufferer by the confession. By that improvised death-couch the widow had turned the matter over in all its phases. Then she had not perceived that, with every rising sun, the confession would become more difficult--that (despite the lying proverb) the rolling stone would gather moss till it should move slowly and more slowly, pressing her breath out by degrees ere it ground her to powder under its weight.