At intervals through the weary night she heard him moving about in the library. About five o'clock, the peculiar click of the hall door told her that he had gone out. Then came two hours of sleep, and memory's dreadful reckoning when she awoke. Breakfast was served at nine o'clock. After going through the dismal form which represents eating on such occasions, Nicholas went to the window to watch for the gondola. "Will you come here, Mary?" he said. She went to him, and measured despairingly, as he talked to her, the gulf which separated them spiritually while they stood side by side. After giving various directions as to material arrangements during his absence, he said, "I went to confession this morning, and to your Padre Giulio." She looked up eagerly into his sad face, stern with the rigidity of repressed emotion. "After confession, I saw him in his own room, and told him all the circumstances of the last three months, out of the confessional, in order that you may feel free to seek from him the advice and consolation I have shown myself unfit to give you." "I don't want to speak of these things to any one," Mary answered. "I have no right to urge you," he said; "but you will oblige me very much by speaking to him once, at least, upon the subject. I cannot tell you the weight it added to my self-reproach to find him ignorant of the wrongs you have suffered, knowing as I do the entire confidence you repose in him personally. You have been very loyal to me, Mary; I shall never forget it." "Of course, I told him nothing concerning any one but myself." "I have another favor to ask, which I should not ask if you were like other women." "What is it?" He took a note from his desk, and gave it to her unfolded. "After reading that, I beg you to give it to Lady Sackvil." She flushed, and a slight trembling passed over her. Then she folded the note and put it into her pocket. "I will give it to her without reading it. I trust you." Nicholas looked at her with an expression of reverence in his face. "I will earn the right to tell you how deeply I honor you," he said. "Any thing I could say now would appear like a new phase of moral weakness; but I will earn the right to speak." As Mary met his eyes, fixed upon her with a look of reverential tenderness, her heart cried out for him. She longed to throw herself upon his breast; to urge him to put off this dreadful parting, and treat the wretched delusion he had yielded to as a dream. But something unanswerable within her soul warned her to let him leave her, that his resolutions might grow strong in solitude; that he might learn by aching experience the worth of the love and sympathy he had slighted. Therefore, she only said, "All will be well; I know it, I feel it." And he answered, "I accept your words as a prophecy, and thank God for them. One favor still I must ask. Mary, you will write to me?" "Constantly."