She raised her eyes, full of eager supplication, I closed the lids with my lips and stooped to pick up the little packet. On the paper in which it was folded, I distinctly read this date: "1864--Justin's Letters." 1864! that was the last year of my father's life. I know it, I feel it, that which I did was infamous; the last wishes of the dying are sacred. I ought pot, no, I ought not to have deceived her who was on the point of leaving me for ever. I heard her breathing quicken at that very moment. Then came a whirlwind of thought too strong for me. If my aunt Louise was so wildly, passionately eager that those letters should be burned, it was because they could put me on the right track of vengeance. Letters written in the last year of my father's life, and she had never spoken of them to me! I did not reason, I did not hesitate, in a lightning-flash I perceived the possibility of learning--what? I knew not; but--of learning. Instead of throwing the packet of letters into the fire, I flung it to one side, under a chair, returned to the bedside and told her in a voice which I endeavoured to keep steady and calm, that her directions had been obeyed, that the letters were burning. She took my hand and kissed it. Oh, what a stab that gentle caress inflicted upon me! I knelt down by her bedside, and hid my head in the sheets, so that her eyes should not meet mine. Alas! it was not for long that I had to dread her glance. At ten she fell asleep, but at noon her restlessness recurred. At two the priest came, and administered the last sacraments to her. She had a second stroke towards evening, never recovered consciousness, and died in the night. Will you pardon me that falsehood which I told you in your last hours, O my beloved dead? Your desire that I should never read those fatal letters, which have begun to shed so terrible a light upon the past, arose from your solicitude to spare me the suspicions that had tortured yourself. On your death-bed your sole thought was for my happiness. Will you forgive me for having frustrated that foresight of the dying? I must speak to you, although I know not whether you can see me this day, or hear me, or even feel the emotion which goes out to you, beloved one, from my inmost soul. But, I am ashamed of having lied to you, when you thought only of being good to me, so good, so good that no human creature was ever better to another; and I am forced to tell you this. You, at least, I have never doubted; there is only one touch of bitterness in my thoughts of you; it is that I did not cherish you sufficiently while you were here with me, that I betrayed you in the matter of the last earthly desire of your pure soul.