And one night, while the revel was progressing in the rooms below, Wareham entered my room and interested me in the description which he gave of a young lord, who wished to be introduced to me. "Young, handsome, and pale as if from thought. The very style of man you admire, my pet." "Let him come up," I answered, and Wareham retired. I stood before the mirror as the young lord entered, and as I turned, I saw the face of my betrothed husband, Ernest Walworth. Upon the horror of that moment I need not dwell. He fell insensible to the floor, and was carried from the room and the house to the carriage by Wareham, who had led him to the place. I have never seen the face of Ernest since that hour. I received one letter from him--one only--in which he set forth the circumstances which induced him to visit my house, and in which he bade me "farewell." He is now in a foreign land. The bones of his father rest in the village church-yard. The cottage home is desolate. Wareham died suddenly about a year after our "marriage." The doctors said that his death was caused by an overdose of Morphine _administered by himself in mistake_. He died in our house, and as mother and myself stood over his coffin in the darkened room, the day before the funeral, I noticed that she regarded first myself and then the face of the dead profligate with a look full of meaning. "Don't you think, dear mother," I whispered, "that the death of this good man was very singular?" She made no reply, but still her face wore that meaning look. "Would it be strange, mother, if your daughter, improving on your lessons, had added another feature to her accomplishments--had from the Midnight Queen,"--I lowered my voice--"become the Midnight _Poisoner_?" I met her gaze boldly--and she turned her face away. He died without ever a dog to mourn for him, and his immense wealth was inherited by a deserted and much abused wife, who lived in a foreign land. Immense wealth in him bore its natural flower--a life of shameless indulgence, ending in a miserable death. I did not shed very bitter tears at his funeral. Hatred is not the word to express the feeling with which I regard his memory. Soon afterward my mother was taken ill, and wasted rapidly to death. Hers was an awful death-bed. The candle was burning to its socket, and mingled its rays with the pale moonlight which shone through the window-curtains. Her brown hair, streaked with gray, falling to her shoulders, her form terribly emaciated, and her eyes glaring in her shrunken face, she started up in her bed, clutched my hands in hers, and--begged me to forgive her. My heart was stone. I could not frame one forgiving word. As her chilled hands clutched mine, she rapidly went over the dark story of her life,--how from an innocent girl, she had been hardened into the thing she was,--and again, her eyes glaring on my face, besought my forgiveness. "I forgive you, Mother," I said slowly, and she died.