“Alethe!”—I cried, terrified to the very soul by that mysterious pang,—and the sound of my voice seemed to reanimate her;—she looked up, with a faint smile, in my face. Her thoughts, which had evidently been wandering, became collected; and in her joy at my safety, her sorrow at my suffering, she forgot wholly the fate that impended over herself. Love, innocent love, alone occupied all her thoughts; and the tenderness with which she spoke,—oh, at any other moment, how I would have listened, have lingered upon, have blessed every word! But the time flew fast—the dreadful morrow was approaching. Already I saw her writhing in the hands of the torturer,—the flames, the racks, the wheels were before my eyes! Half frantic with the fear that her resolution was fixed, I flung myself from the litter, in an agony of weeping, and supplicated her, by the love she bore me, by the happiness that awaited us, by her own merciful God, who was too good to require such a sacrifice,—by all that the most passionate anxiety could dictate, I implored that she would avert from us the doom that was coming, and—but for once—comply with the vain ceremony demanded of her. Shrinking from me, as I spoke,—but with a look more of sorrow than reproach,—“What, thou, too!” she said mournfully,—“thou, into whose spirit I had fondly hoped the same heavenly truth had descended as into my own! Oh, be not thou leagued with those who would tempt me to ‘make shipwreck of my faith!’ Thou, who couldst alone bind me to life, use not thy power; but let me die, as He I serve hath commanded,—die for the Truth. Remember the holy lessons we heard on those nights, those happy nights, when both the Present and Future smiled upon us,—when even the gift of eternal life came more welcome to my soul, from the blessed conviction that thou wert to be a sharer in it;—shall I forfeit now that divine privilege? shall I deny the true God, whom we then learned to love? “No, my own betrothed,” she continued,—pointing to the two rings on her finger,—“behold these pledges,—they are both sacred. I should have been as true to thee as I am now to heaven,—nor in that life to which I am hastening shall our love be forgotten. Should the baptism of fire, through which I shall pass to‐morrow, make me worthy to be heard before the Throne of Grace, I will intercede for thy soul—I will pray that it may yet share with mine that ‘inheritance, immortal and undefiled,’ which Mercy offers, and that thou,—my dear mother,—and I—”