Emily was a good deal agitated. Every memory connected with John Ayliffe was painful to her. It seemed as if nothing but misfortune, sorrow, and anxiety, had attended her ever since she first saw him, and all connected themselves more or less with him. The strange sort of mysterious feeling of sympathy which she had experienced when first she beheld him, and which had seemed explained to her when she learned their near relationship, had given place day by day to stronger and stronger personal dislike, and she could not now even come to visit him on his death-bed with the clergyman without feeling a mixture of repugnance and dread which she struggled with not very successfully. They passed, however, through the outer into the inner room where Mistress Best was sitting with the dying man, reading to him the New Testament. But as soon as Mr. Dixwell, who had led the way, entered, the good woman stopped, and John Ayliffe turned his head faintly towards the door. "Ah, this is very kind of you," he said when he saw Emily, "I can tell you all better than any one else." "Sir Philip is absent," said Mr. Dixwell, "and will not be home for several hours." "Hours!" repeated John Ayliffe. "My time is reduced to minutes!" Emily approached quietly, and Mrs. Best quitted the room and shut the door. Mr. Dixwell drew the table nearer to the bed, spread some writing paper which he had brought with him upon it, and dipped a pen in the ink, as a hint that no time was to be lost in proceeding. "Well, well," said John Ayliffe with a sigh, "I won't delay, though it is very hard to have to tell such a story. Mistress Emily, I have done you and your family great wrong and great harm, and I am very, very sorry for it, especially for what I have done against you." "Then I forgive you from all my heart," cried Emily, who had been inexpressibly shocked at the terrible change which the young man's appearance presented. She had never seen death, nor was aware of the terrible shadow which the dark banner of the great Conqueror often casts before it. "Thank you, thank you," replied John Ayliffe; "but you must not suppose, Mistress Emily, that all the evil I have done was out of my own head. Others prompted me to a great deal; although I was ready enough to follow their guidance, I must confess. The two principal persons were Shanks the lawyer, and Mrs. Hazleton--Oh, that woman is, I believe, the devil incarnate." "Hush, hush," said Mr. Dixwell, "I cannot put such words as those down, nor should you speak them. You had better begin in order too, and tell all from the commencement, but calmly and in a Christian spirit, remembering that this is your own confession, and not an accusation of others."