’Once you loved me; I ask you not to love me now.  There is nothing about me now that can touch the heart of woman.  I am old before my time; bent with the blended influence of action and of thought, and of physical and moral suffering.  The play of my spirit has gone for ever.  My passions have expired like my hopes.  The remaining sands of my life are few.  Once it was otherwise:  you can recall a different picture of the Marmion on whom you smiled, and of whom you were the first love.  O Annabel! grey, feeble, exhausted, penitent, let me stagger over your threshold, and die!  I ask no more; I will not hope for your affection; I will not even count upon your pity; but endure my presence; let your roof screen my last days!’

It was read; it was read again, dim as was the sight of Lady Annabel with fast-flowing tears.  Still holding the letter, but with hands fallen, she gazed upon the shining waters before her in a fit of abstraction.  It was the voice of her child that roused her.

‘Mother,’ said Venetia in a tone of some decision, ’you are troubled, and we have only one cause of trouble.  That letter is from my father.’

Lady Annabel gave her the letter in silence.

Venetia withdrew almost unconsciously a few paces from her mother.  She felt this to be the crisis of her life.  There never was a moment which she believed required more fully the presence of all her energies.  Before she had addressed Lady Annabel, she had endeavoured to steel her mind to great exertion.  Yet now that she held the letter, she could not command herself sufficiently to read it.  Her breath deserted her; her hand lost its power; she could not even open the lines on which perhaps her life depended.  Suddenly, with a rapid effort, she glanced at the contents.  The blood returned to her check; her eye became bright with excitement; she gasped for breath; she advanced to Lady Annabel.  ‘Ah! mother,’ she exclaimed, ’you will grant all that it desires!’

Still gazing on the wave that laved the shore of the island with an almost inperceptible ripple, Lady Annabel continued silent.

‘Mother,’ said Venetia, ‘my beloved mother, you hesitate.’  She approached Lady Annabel, and with one arm round her neck, she grasped with the other her mother’s hand.  ’I implore you, by all that affection which you lavish on me, yield to this supplication.  O mother! dearest mother! it has been my hope that my life has been at least a life of duty; I have laboured to yield to all your wishes.  I have struggled to make their fulfilment the law of my being.  Yes! mother, your memory will assure you, that when the sweetest emotions of my heart were the stake, you appealed to me to sacrifice them, and they were dedicated to your will.  Have I ever murmured?  I have sought only to repay your love by obedience.  Speak to me, dearest mother!  I implore you speak to me!  Tell me, can you ever repent relenting in this instance?  O mother! you will not hesitate; you will not indeed;