“My husband, the servant-woman--who was crying bitterly--and two or three doctors were in the room. They were talking in low tones, and kept glancing at me. “‘What is the matter?’ I asked; ‘what have you been doing to my hand that it pains me so?’ It was the surgeon nearest me who answered. “‘Madame,’ he said in a compassionate tone, ‘it was so badly burned that we were obliged to take it off.’ “‘Off! burned!’ I shrieked, wild with terror and despair. “‘Yes,’ he said, ‘your husband found you lying insensible on the floor, with your right hand in the grate and burnt almost to a cinder.’” Ethel sprang up, threw her arms about the Madame’s neck, and sobbed aloud. “My poor, poor aunt!” she said when she could speak. “What a dreadful, dreadful thing it was! My heart aches for you! oh, how could you bear it?” Madame Le Conte returned the caress, then Ethel resumed her seat. “I could not escape it!” she sighed, “and I felt that it was a just punishment that deprived me of the hand I had used to forge the notices which robbed my sister of her lover. “Remorse has tortured me horribly many a time since, but I never have resorted to the intoxicating cup to escape its stings. “I gave up society from the time of my accident. I could not bear the thought of exposing myself to the curious gaze and questioning of common acquaintances or of strangers. “My husband pitied me very much, and never once said to me, ‘It is your own fault,’ as well he might. Finding how I shrank from meeting any one I knew, he proposed removing to this city, where we were entirely unknown, and I was glad to come. It is now ten years since he died, leaving me everything he possessed.” CHAPTER XXXV. A FLITTING. “The keen spirit Seizes the prompt occasion, makes the thought Start into instant action, and at once Plans and performs, resolves and executes!” HANNAH MORE. “And all alone!” sighed Ethel, breaking the momentary pause that followed the concluding sentence of the Madame’s story. “Ten years of utter loneliness, save the presence of hired servants--of constant ill-health and mental anguish, besides the dreadful loss of your right hand! My poor, poor aunt, you have indeed suffered horribly and long!” “Indeed I have, and I hope Heaven will accept it as some atonement! Well, what is it, child: you deem it not sufficient?” as Ethel turned upon her a pained, troubled look. “Ah, Aunt Nannette,” she said, “there is but one atonement for sin, even the blood of Christ.” “My sister, my gentle, forgiving little Pansy, would think I had endured far more than enough,” sobbed the Madame in an injured tone, and almost turning her back upon her niece.