"Show me to my mother's!" he cried, smiting his hand suddenly on his bosom. "Would that I had this day to be buried in the grave prepared for my sister!" Afraid to cast upon him another glance, she conducted him to the house. "It is here, sir," said she, pointing to the house. His frame, his features were convulsed; they shook with agitation. He raised his hand and struck upon the door. It was opened by a woman dressed in the garb of mourning, and whose years might be described as being between youth and middle-age. "Do I dream!" he exclaimed, starting back as he beheld her. "I am punished!--yes, I am now punished beyond the measure of my crime! Marion, I am George Mordington!" She clasped her hands together, a wild shriek escaped her lips, and she fell back as dead upon the floor. Others who sat with the corpse ran to her assistance; but his voice had reached an ear where its tones had lived as a memory that might never die. "My son! my son!" cried the aged widow, and pressed forward to throw her arms around his neck. "My mother!" he cried, springing from the ground, where he had sunk by the side of Marion. The widow fell upon the breast of her son, and he wept aloud upon her neck. Strangers raised Marion and conveyed her from the house. She had long believed George Mordington, the object of her early affections, was with the dead; and under this conviction, and in obedience to her father's command, she had given her hand to another. The maiden whom the betrothed husband of her youth had met on alighting from the coach was her daughter, and the features of the girl then were as the mother's had been when they last parted. George Mordington accompanied his sister's corpse, as chief mourner, to the grave. The friends of his boyhood had forgotten the tale of his folly; but its consequences gnawed with fiercer agony in his heart than when he was first ashamed to behold his own face in a glass because of it. On the following day, it was stated that Marion was not expected to live, and she requested to speak with him before she died. He approached her bedside--she stretched her hand towards him. "Forgive me, George!" she cried. "I knew not that you yet lived. I am the wife of one who has long deserted me; my heart has long been broken, and your appearance has severed the last cord that linked me with existence. But I leave behind me a daughter. When I am gone, there will be no parent to provide for her--no father whose roof will shelter or hand defend her. As you once loved me, protect my poor child!" "I will! I will!" he exclaimed. "Farewell, Marion!" And he rushed from the house.