“You tell me that in the scanty years of your past life, you already look back on a hundred follies, and that you have unnumbered faults of character at which I do not even guess.  Making some allowance for a figurative expression, I will answer ‘it may be so.’  What then?  I have never called you an angel, and never desired you to be perfect.  The weaknesses which cling, tendril-like, to a fine nature, not unfrequently bind us to it by ties we do not seek to sever.  I know you for a true-hearted girl, but with the bitter lessons of life still unlearned; let it be my part to shield you from their sad knowledge,—­yet whatever sorrow or evil falls upon you, I must or ought to share.  Let us have no secrets; and while the Truth which gives its purest luster to your eye, and its richest rose to your cheek, still reigns in your soul, I cannot dream of a fault grave enough to deserve harsher rebuke than the kiss of forgiveness.”

What lines to read at such a moment!  No wonder their meaning reached her mind far differently than it had done when they were first received.  Then she could have little heeded it; witness how carelessly the letter had been put away—­how forgotten had been its contents.

Her tears had flowed in torrents, but Lucy Ferrars no longer strove to check them.  And yet there gleamed through them a brighter smile than had visited her countenance for many a month.  A resolve approved by all her better nature was growing firm within her heart; and that which an hour before would have seemed too dreadful to contemplate was losing half its terrors.  How often an ascent, which looks in the distance a bare precipice, shows us, when we approach its face, the notches by which we may climb!—­and not a few of the difficulties of life yield to our will when we bravely encounter them.

“Why did I fear him so much?” murmured Lady Lucy to herself.  “I ought not to have needed such an assurance as this to throw myself at his feet, and bear even scorn and rebuke, rather than prolong the reign of falsehood and deceit.  Yes—­yes,” and gathering a heap of papers in her hand with the “love-letter” beneath, she descended the stairs.

There is no denying that Lady Lucy paused at the library door—­no denying that her heart beat quickly, and her breath seemed well-nigh spent; but she was right to act on the good impulse, and not wait until the new-born courage should sink.

Mr. Ferrars had finished the newspaper, and was writing an unimportant note; his back was to the door, and hearing the rustle of his wife’s dress, and knowing her step, he did not turn his head sufficiently to observe her countenance, but he said, good-humoredly,

“At last!  What have you been about?  I thought we were to go out before luncheon to look at the bracelet I mentioned to you.”

“No, Walter—­no bracelet—­you must never give me any jewels again;” and as Lady Lucy spoke she leaned against a chair for support.  At such words her husband turned quickly round, started up, and exclaimed.