It was with no pharisaical idea that Nugent Uffington exerted his influence without appearing to do so, to prove to May how small and contemptible had been the life in which she had so long revelled. There was very little of the repentant sinner about this grim cynic; but he had heart and brain, and he gave the men and women of the present generation very little credit for the possession of either. He, too, had outraged the law which alike is human and divine, but in his sin there had at least been some condoning element of passion; he had loved the woman whom he destroyed with his whole soul and strength, and had sacrificed position and prospects to make and keep her his. They two had been scouted by the world, but they had been all and all to each other, and had set the world at defiance; and she--she was gone now, but she had passed away in the full knowledge of his devotion; and he had the satisfaction of knowing that, unless it were for remorse, and of that she had never shown any sign to him, she had not, from the time they left England together, had an unhappy moment. 'The Giaour was right,' he said to himself one day, as he was revolving these matters in his mind: '"I die, but first I have possess'd; And come what may, I have been bless'd." My now solitary life is not without its constantly recurring bitter grief, but I have the memory of Julie to fall back upon, and the knowledge that whatever sacrifice I may have made was made for one who was doubly, trebly worthy of it. But this poor girl has ruined herself for a man whom she did not care for, and merely, as it seems to me, from ignorance and want of proper guidance.' * * * * * *