I listened with every pulse; my heart stopped, spellbound, before that story; not even my own life could have had more interest to me than his; and vaguely--but oh! how bitterly--it began to dawn upon me, that once I might have had the power to have made the past forgotten in the present, to have won him to believe in love and truth once more; that in my fatal choice I had not doomed myself alone, that three souls, instead of my own sinning one, were writhing now under the curse of my folly and deceit. Alice Rutledge's name had perished forever from the records of the good and pure; where would mine be, when the secrets of all hearts should be revealed? Not among the good, with a lie on my lips, a life-long hypocrisy to be carried in my heart; not among the pure, cherishing yet this unconquered passion, while in the sight of Heaven I was breaking a vow only less sacred than the one I must make before the altar. But it is her story and not mine I am to tell. If human love and care could suffice to keep any soul, under the pressure of a strong temptation, Alice Rutledge might have been safe; yet environed and hemmed in with affection, she fell; honor, pride, filial love, were powerless to keep her back. The only principle that can save man or woman in the hour when the powers of darkness have leave to try them, she lacked, and lacking that, fell hopelessly from the earthly paradise which alone she had lived for or regarded. The fair, frail daughter of a godless house, the child whose glance had never been directed to anything higher than virtue and honor, to whom no principle more binding than that of morality had been taught, whose frailty had never been strengthened by any aid more powerful and enduring than the yearning fondness of the hearts that doted on her; what wonder that when the powers of hell assaulted her, no strength could stand against them that was not divine, no work stand in that day, that was of wood, or hay, or stubble, no work that had not Heaven's own seal to resist the devouring flame!