Ill! dead! My heart beat faster and faster as I pondered over these words. Then I should be free indeed; his death would release me from bondage, from terror, from poverty--those three evils which dogged my steps. I had never ventured to let my thoughts run that way, but this child's prattling had forced them into it. Richard Foster ill--dying! O God! what ought I to do? I could not make myself known to him; that was impossible. I would ten thousand times sooner die myself than return to him. He was not alone either. But yet there came back to my mind the first days when I knew him, when he was all tenderness and devotion to me, declaring that he could find no fault in his girl-wife. How happy I had been for a little while, exchanging my stepmother's harshness for his indulgence! He might have won my love; he had almost won it. But that happy, golden time was gone, and could never come back to me. Yet my heart was softened toward him, as I thought of him ill, perhaps dying. What could I do for him, without placing myself in his power? There was one thing only that I could do, only one little sacrifice I could make for him whom I had vowed, in childish ignorance, to love, honor, and cherish in sickness and in health, until death parted us. A home was secured to me for twelve months, and at the end of that time I should have a better career open to me. I had enough money still to last me until then. My diamond ring, which had been his own gift to me on our wedding-day, would be valuable to him. Sixty pounds would be a help to him, if he were as poor as this child said. He must be poor, or he would never have gone to live in that mean street and neighborhood. Perhaps--if he had been alone--I do not know, but possibly if he had been quite alone, ill, dying in that poor lodging of his, I might have gone to him. I ask myself again, could you have done this thing? But I cannot answer it even to myself. Poor and ill he was, but he was not alone. It was enough for me, then, that I could do something, some little service for him. The old flame of vengeance had no spark of heat left in it. I was free from hatred of him. I set the child gently away from me, and wrote my last letter to my husband. Both the letter and the ring I enclosed in a little box. These are the words I wrote, and I put neither date nor name of place: "I know that you are poor, and I send you all I can spare--the ring you once gave to me. I am even poorer than yourself, but I have just enough for my immediate wants. I forgive you, as I trust God forgives me." I sat looking at it, thinking of it for some time. There was a vague doubt somewhere in my mind that this might work some mischief. But at last I decided that it should go. I must register the packet at a post-office on our way to the station, and it could not fail to reach him.