His wife took no farther notice, but stepped across the room to me, “Our poor dying Maria knows you are here; and probably you are not aware that he wrote to her after his”--her voice quavered after his condemnation, the night before he suffered, that you were the only one who shewed him kindness; and she has also read the newspapers giving an account of the trial. She wishes to see you will you pleasure her? Senora Campana has made her acquainted that you are the bearer of some trinkets belonging to him, from which she infers you witnessed his last moments, as one of them, she was told, was her picture, poor dear girl; and she knew that must have grown to his heart till the last. But it will be too agitating. I will try and dissuade her from the interview until the doctor comes, at all events.’ The worthy lady stepped again into Maria’s apartment, and I could not avoid hearing what passed. “My dear Maria, Mr Cringle has no objection to wait on you; but after your severe attack this morning, I don’t think it will be wise. Delay it until Dr Bergara comes--at any rate, until the evening, Maria.” “Mother,” she said, in a weak, plaintive voice, although husky from the phlegm which was fast coagulating in her throat--“Mother, I already have ceased to be of this world; I am dying, dearest mother, fast dying; and oh, thou All-good and All-merciful Being, against whom I have fearfully sinned, would that the last struggle were now o’er, and that my weary spirit were released, and my shame hidden in the silent tomb, and my sufferings and very name forgotten!” She paused and gasped for breath; I thought it was all over with her; but she rallied again and proceeded “Time is rapidly ebbing from me, dearest mother,--for mother I must call you, more than a mother have you been to me--and the ocean of eternity is opening to my view. If I am to see him at all, I must see him now; I shall be more agitated by the expectation of the interview than by seeing him at once. Oh! let me see him now, let me look on one who witnessed his last moments.”