“If the poor lad were not dying, I should see that he gave himself up, as indeed he set out to do some weeks ago, but was frustrated by his friends. He is dying for love of her. I believe I say so with truth. Pity and love and remorse and horror of his deed have brought him to the state you saw him in. To be honest with you, he might have got better enough to be tortured for a while in a madhouse, for no jury would have brought him in anything but insane at the time, with the evidence that would have been adduced; but in his anxiety to see me one day--for his friends at that time did not favour my visits, because I encouraged him to surrender--he got out of the house alone to come to me, but fainted in the churchyard, and lay on the damp earth for the better part of an hour, I fancy, before we found him. Still, had it not been for the state of his mind, he might have got over that too.--As you hope to be forgiven, you must forgive him.” He held out his hand to her. She was a little softened, and gave him hers. “Allow me one word more,” said the curate, “and then we shall go: Our crimes are friends that will hunt us either to the bosom of God, or the pit of hell.” She looked down, but her look was still sullen and proud. The curate rose, took up her bag, went with her to the station, got her ticket, and saw her off. Then he hastened back to Drew, and told him the whole story. “Poor woman!” said her husband. “--But God only knows how much _I_ am to blame for all this. If I had behaved better to her she might never have left me, and your poor young friend would now be well and happy.” “Perhaps consuming his soul to a cinder with that odious drug,” said Wingfold. “‘Tis true, as Edgar in King Lear says: The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us; but he takes our sins on himself, and while he drives them out of us with a whip of scorpions he will yet make them work his ends. He defeats our sins, makes them prisoners, forces them into the service of good, chains them like galley-slaves to the rowing-benches of the gospel-ship, or sets them like ugly gurgoyles or corbels or brackets in the walls of his temples.--No, that last figure I retract. I don’t like it. It implies their continuance.” “Poor woman!” said Mr. Drew again, who for once had been inattentive to the curate. “Well! she is sorely punished too.” “She will be worse punished yet,” said the curate, “if I can read the signs of character. SHE is not repentant yet--though I did spy in her just once a touch of softening.” “It is an awful retribution,” said the draper, “and I may yet have to bear my share--God help me!” “I suspect it is the weight of her own crime that makes her so fierce to avenge her daughter. I doubt if anything makes one so unforgiving as guilt unrepented of.” “Well, I must try to find out where she is, and keep an eye upon her.” “That will be easy enough. But why?”