“I was lying in my old chamber at Glengoyle, and Heraine was sitting at my bedside.  Her garments were sable, her brown hair thin, her face placid, as of yore, but marked by deep-seated grief, and the magnetism of will and courage was gone from it.  To the eye she was the same; to the mind, a weak and broken thing.  Crime had changed both our natures; she had been tutor and governess before, and I the passive, submissive creature; but sin had made me bold, and sorrow worn her to a woman.

“‘Luke,’ she said, in the same lullaby tone, ’do you know me? do you recognize the place? are you still weak?’

“‘Heraine,’ said I, sternly, ’do not the wrongs we have done each other forbid this intimacy?’

“‘Oh, Luke!’ she replied, ’let us not uncover the past.  I have buried your sin with its victim, and watched you through weary months, and prayed God to pardon you.’

“‘Can God pardon your sin to me, Heraine?’

“‘I trust so, Luke,’ she said feebly, ’if ever in my life I treasured you a hard thought or did you any injury.’

“‘Is it no injury,’ I said, ’to have lured me by a false promise from my quiet home?  I have endured the torture of cities, seas, suns, and storms.  Your pledge was my spur and talisman through all.  But you had cheated me with a lie.  You were another’s already.  For you I have stained my hands with blood and shut heaven against my soul!’

“‘As I have an account to Settle, Luke,’ she pleaded, ’I meant your happiness only.  To have told you that I was wedded would have pained you.  I thought to familiarize you with scenes and sounds, by making my regard an incentive to adventure.  It was your mother’s plan.  I yielded to the deception, and believed it good.”

“‘It was a wicked falsehood,’ I said; ’you knew the weakness of my nature—­that my sensitiveness was a disease—­that to cross me was to kill.  You have made both of us wretched forever.’

“My cruelty was murdering her; her face grew deathly in its pallor, and she pressed her hands upon her heart.

“‘Let the dead man lie between us,’ I proceeded; ’it is not seemly for you to be my friend; and to me you are an ever-present accusation.  We must not see each other!’

“‘Oh, Luke!’ she cried, falling upon her knees imploringly; ’I am a bruised thing, a-weary of the world.  This silence and darkness are endeared to me.  Do not send me away!’

“‘You agitate me,’ I said; ’let us do our penance, each in loneliness.  There was a time when our sorrows were mutual; it is past; we have only to say farewell.’

“I covered my face with my hands; she touched my brow with her lips, and when the door had closed upon her sobbing I heard her footfalls making mournful music on the stairs.  They rang upon the lawn, then pattered down the drive; they passed desolately out of the gate, they were lost on the highway, and then the world became blank again.

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