She paused, still looking at me, but with the same deathly blank of expression.  The eye had ceased to speak already; nothing but the voice was left.

“My husband has asked, who will believe you?” she went on; her weak tones gathering strength with every fresh word she uttered.  “I have answered that I will; for you have spoken the truth.  Now, when the light of this world is fading from my eyes; here, in this earthly home of much sorrow and suffering, which I must soon quit—­in the presence of my husband—­under the same roof with my sinful child—­I bear you witness that you have spoken the truth.  I, her mother, say it of her:  Margaret Sherwin is guilty; she is no more worthy to be called your wife.”

She pronounced the last words slowly, distinctly, solemnly.  Till that fearful denunciation was spoken, her husband had been looking sullenly and suspiciously towards us, as we stood together; but while she uttered it, his eyes fell, and he turned away his head in silence.

He never looked up, never moved, or interrupted her, as she continued, still addressing me; but now speaking very slowly and painfully, pausing longer and longer between every sentence.

“From this room I go to my death-bed.  The last words I speak in this world shall be to my husband, and shall change his heart towards you.  I have been weak of purpose,” (as she said this, a strange sweetness and mournfulness began to steal over her tones,) “miserably, guiltily weak, all my life.  Much sorrow and pain and heavy disappointment, when I was young, did some great harm to me which I have never recovered since.  I have lived always in fear of others, and doubt of myself; and this has made me guilty of a great sin towards you. Forgive me before I die!  I suspected the guilt that was preparing—­I foreboded the shame that was to come—­they hid it from others’ eyes; but, from the first, they could not hide it from mine—­and yet I never warned you as I ought! That man had the power of Satan over me!  I always shuddered before him, as I used to shudder at the darkness when I was a little child!  My life has been all fear—­fear of him; fear of my husband, and even of my daughter; fear, worse still, of my own thoughts, and of what I had discovered that should be told to you. When I tried to speak, you were too generous to understand me—­I was afraid to think my suspicions were right, long after they should have been suspicions no longer.  It was misery!—­oh, what misery from then till now!”

Her voice died away for a moment, in faint, breathless murmurings.  She struggled to recover it, and repeated in a whisper: 

“Forgive me before I die!  I have made a terrible atonement; I have borne witness against the innocence of my own child.  My own child!  I dare not bid God bless her, if they bring her to my bedside!—­forgive me!—­forgive me before I die!”

She took my hand, and pressed it to her cold lips.  The tears gushed into my eyes, as I tried to speak to her.