“May God bless you, my children, and strengthen you and preserve you in that innocence which is the only thing to be truly and earnestly prayed for! May He in his mercy bless you! My children, the blessing of a mother is good for the souls of her children, let that mother’s errors be what they may. Come nearer, dears. Let me hold your hands; and you must promise you will still love me. I am going to confess to you, my children, the error;—yes, I will utter the word—the crime of my youth. I was a married woman when I first knew your father. But he to whom I was married did not care for me; perhaps it was my fault he did not—I will not throw any blame on him. My heart was desolate! Your father saw me unhappy, and he pitied me—he loved me. I forgot my duties, forgot the vow I had breathed at the altar, in the sight of God; I left the husband I had sworn to love, and gave the love which was his due to another. This is a dreadful, a heinous sin, my children, and this sin did your mother commit! But you have been early taught to read your Bible, and you have there learned that there is more joy in Heaven over one repentant sinner, than over ninety and nine just men who need no repentance. Oh, blessed words! How many thousand thousand times have I read, and re-read ye! Ye alone have preserved me from sinking under the load of my guilt. Yes, my children, I have repented; deeply, earnestly, bitterly, unceasingly. I may truly say, my sin is ever before me. Oh! if repentance can find mercy at the throne of Heaven, let it find mercy at your hands, my children! Pardon, pardon your erring mother!” and worked up beyond her powers of endurance, she threw herself on her knees at their feet. They rushed to her, they kissed her, they raised her to the sofa, they soothed her, they wept over her, they lavished on her every most touching expression of affection, they assured her of their love, their respect, their veneration. “Stop! stop! beloved ones. Do not let your tenderness to me blind you to the reality of my sin. Love me! Yes, love me still, but I must not let that love confound in your young minds the distinctions between virtue and vice. I am not yet come to the end. I have to tell you how the errors of the fathers are visited upon the children. “Even you, my Emily, know that unless parents are solemnly married according to the law of the land, the children do not inherit their name or their property, and alas! alas! you, Edward, came into this weary world, before my former marriage was cancelled. Upon your head are my sins visited. Yes: and upon yours Charles, and yours Emily, for you have a mother, whom you must not honour, for whom you must blush before the world.” “Oh, mamma, mamma,” they cried at once, “we love you, we honour you! Oh! that we could prove how much we love you,—better than ever!” “Thanks, thanks! my own dear, innocent, good children! And would you really do all you can to sooth my anguish, to lessen the keenness of my remorse?”