From long acquaintance with the world, the imagination becomes familiarised with what at first inspired horror; or from experience of the weakness of human nature, the temptations to which it is exposed, and the gradations by which one error often leads on to guilt, the charitable learn to pity the sinner, while they condemn the sin. But Lucy’s perceptions of right and wrong were not blunted by habitual intercourse with the faulty, nor softened by the consideration of their temptations or their repentance. She saw but the broad distinction between virtue and vice, and she looked on the latter with the indignant horror of youth. Charity is not the characteristic virtue of the young. While she was absorbed in such new and painful reflections, there came a tap at the door, and her maid informed her that Lord Montreville was awake, and was incessantly asking for her. She started at the interruption, and, quickly dismissing the maid, stood for a few moments paralysed. She had looked with loathing at the letter, till her tears had all retreated to their cells. She roused herself, and hastily pushing the other papers into an escrutoire, she stopped to pick up the fatal epistle. At that moment the servant entered. She instinctively crammed it into her bosom, but as instantly pulled it forth again, as if its very touch was contamination. Lord Montreville was so impatient for her return, that a second messenger had been despatched to hasten her. She rushed to her own apartment, where she placed the letter under lock and key, and then was obliged, with what composure she could muster, to repair to the bedside of her husband. He greeted her with a pleased smile,—he extended his pale and emaciated hand to take her’s. “Dearest Lucy,” he said, “it seems an age since you left me; it does me good to know my kindest and best nurse is near me. I cannot bear to feel that what I love best is absent from me.” His hand lay passively in hers; her soul recoiled from him. She could not return the pressure of his hand, she could not meet his eyes. “Falsehood upon his lips,” she thought, “when scarcely snatched from the jaws of death, when still trembling on the verge of the grave.” She made an effort to speak, and, assuring him the doctor forbade all excitement or emotion, she begged him to compose himself to sleep. “You will not leave me, then?” She promised she would not, and she seated herself by the bedside. All was quiet; he gradually dozed off into a light slumber; and there she sat bewildered, confused, fancying all that had occurred must be a dream! Could he speak so kindly, so tenderly, and yet be false? Could he address her as the being he loved best, while he preferred to her this Alicia? Could he, with death staring him in the face, thus add a deliberate lie to all his other sins? Yet there existed the letter—the letter which expressed implicit reliance on his affections!