The affright of those present was great.  Now that they had perhaps killed her, they reflected it would have been as well, if they had taken warning from the former occasion, and approached very carefully a nature so capable of any extreme.  After awhile she revived, with a faint groan, amid the sobs of her companions.  I was on my knees by the bed, and held her cold hand.  One of those most aggrieved took it from me to beg her pardon, and say it was impossible not to love her.  She made no reply.

Neither that night, nor for several days, could a word be obtained from her, nor would she touch food; but, when it was presented to her, or any one drew near for any cause, she merely turned away her head, and gave no sign.  The teacher saw that some terrible nervous affection had fallen upon her, that she grew more and more feverish.  She knew not what to do.

Meanwhile a new revolution had taken place in the mind of the passionate, but nobly-tempered child.  All these months nothing but the sense of injury had rankled in her heart.  She had gone on in one mood, doing what the demon prompted, without scruple and without fear.

But, at the moment of detection, the tide ebbed, and the bottom of her soul lay revealed to her eye.  How black, how stained and sad.  Strange, strange that she had not seen before the baseness and cruelty of falsehood, the loveliness of truth.  Now, amid the wreck, uprose the moral nature which never before had attained the ascendant.  “But,” she thought, “too late, sin is revealed to me in all its deformity, and, sin-defiled, I will not, cannot live.  The, mainspring of life is broken.”

And thus passed slowly by her hours in that black despair of which only youth is capable.  In older years men suffer more dull pain, as each sorrow that comes drops its leaden weight into the past, and, similar features of character bringing similar results, draws up a heavy burden buried in those depths.  But only youth has energy, with fixed unwinking gaze, to contemplate grief, to hold it in the arms and to the heart, like a child which makes it wretched, yet is indubitably its own.

The lady who took charge of this sad child had never well understood her before, but had always looked on her with great tenderness.  And now love seemed, when all around were in greatest distress, fearing to call in medical aid, fearing to do without it, to teach her where the only balm was to be found that could have healed this wounded spirit.

One night she came in, bringing a calming draught.  Mariana was sitting, as usual, her hair loose, her dress the same robe they had put on her at first, her eyes fixed vacantly upon the whited wall.  To the proffers and entreaties of her nurse she made no reply.

The lady burst into tears, but Mariana did not seem even to observe it.

The lady then said, “O my child, do not despair, do not think that one great fault can mar a whole life.  Let me trust you, let me tell you the griefs of my sad life.  I will tell to you, Mariana, what I never expected to impart to any one.”