“Come,—­none of that.  No sentiment,—­face the facts.  Think over all that was said, every word.  Have you done so?”

“I have,—­every word.”

“Well?”

“Ah, stop torturing me.  Do not ask me any more questions.  I am going away,—­flying like a coward.  I will not tempt further suffering.  And yet—­once more—­only once? could that do harm?  Ah, God, my God, be merciful!” she cried, clasping her hands and lifting them above her bowed head.  Then remembering, in the midst of her anguish, some words she had been reading that morning, she repeated them with a bitter emphasis,—­“What can wringing of the hands do, that which is ordained to alter?” As she did so she tore asunder her clasped hands, to drop them clinched by her side,—­the gesture of despair substituted for that of hope.

“It is not Heaven I am to besiege!” she exclaimed.  “Will I never learn that?  Its justice cannot overcome the injustice of man.  My God!” she cried then, with a sudden, terrible energy, “our punishment should be light, our rest sure, our paradise safe, at the end, since we have to make now such awful atonement; since men compel us to endure the pangs of purgatory, the tortures of hell, here upon earth.”

After that she sat for a long while silent, evidently revolving a thousand thoughts of every shape and hue, judging from the myriads of lights and shadows that flitted over her face.  At last, rousing herself, she perceived that she had no more time to spend in this sorrowful employment,—­that she must prepare to go away from him, as her heart said, forever.  “Forever!” it repeated.  “This, then, is the close of it all,—­the miserable end!” With that thought she shut her slender hand, and struck it down hard, the blood almost starting from the driven nails and bruised flesh, unheeding; though a little space thereafter she smiled, beholding it, and muttered, “So—­the drop of savage blood is telling at last!”

Presently she was gone.  It was a pleasant spot to which her aunt took her,—­one of the pretty little villages scattered up and down the long sweep of the Hudson.  Pleasant people they were too,—­these English friends of Mrs. Lancaster,—­who made her welcome, but did not intrude upon the solitude which they saw she desired.

Sabbath morning they all went to the little chapel, and left her, as she wished, alone.  Being so alone, after hearing their adieus, she went up to her room and sat down to devote herself once again to sorrowful contemplation,—­not because she would, but because she must.

Poor girl! the bright spring sunshine streamed over her where she sat;—­not a cloud in the sky, not a dimming of mist or vapor on all the hills, and the broad river-sweep which, placid and beautiful, rolled along; the cattle far off on the brown fields rubbed their silky sides softly together, and gazed through the clear atmosphere with a lazy content, as though they saw the waving of green grass, and heard