“Write to me, my love, my wife, my own, own blessed wife! Your letter will reach me in safety if you inclose it to the new governor, who is a kind-hearted man, and has given me permission to bid you do so. He pities me. He will stand my friend. He promises to forward a petition which I am now drawing up, direct to the Emperor, and a ray of hope has dawned upon me. I may yet return to you, my Ellen, and to my children— “In life and in death, “Your adoring husband, “CHARLES CRESFORD.” Ellen and Algernon spoke not—moved not. They sat transfixed—they did not venture to raise their eyes to each other. Neither could entertain any doubt of the authenticity of the letter. It would be folly, worse than folly, to utter what neither could believe. They who had been all the world to each other—they whose love had been so pure that angels might have looked down from heaven and smiled upon it—what were they now? They dared not think. At length Ellen murmured in a low and almost choked voice— “Is he my husband, Algernon? Does the law say he is my husband?” “Ellen, do not make me speak my own doom.” “It is enough,” she said, “and my child is—” she paused for a moment, and after a short struggle, continued,—“is illegitimate!” He was silent. “Oh, merciful Heaven!” she screamed, “it cannot be true,” and she started from her seat with a wild look of hope. “It is a dream! Tell me so, Algernon, my own Algernon, my husband, tell me so. Speak to me!” and she threw herself on her knees at his feet, with clasped hands, and beseeching eyes, looking up in his face. He lifted her from the ground, and whispered,—“We can fly, Ellen. There are other lands than this. There are countries where we may be beyond the reach of British laws, where we may have the clear blue sky of heaven above us, where Nature pours forth her treasures to man with a bounteous hand; where we may live in freedom from the trammels of human institutions, but bound by the most sacred ties—our own vows of eternal constancy, which surely have been registered above.” “Live with you, as your mistress! No, never, Algernon!” and she drew up her slender form to its full height, and stood the very personification of female purity and dignity. “Never, Algernon! Any thing would be more tolerable than to have you cease to respect me.” She seemed to have regained her self-command. An almost supernatural strength for a moment inspired her. “Now what is to be done? What is it our duty to do? But oh! the shame, the dreadful shame, of being exposed to the world as having lived for two years in sin.” At this moment the voices of the children were heard in the passage; they flung open the door, and came bounding joyously into the room with the wild flowers they had gathered in their walk. The sight of them softened and overcame the mother,—she burst into a flood of tears.