60 JESSIES ACQUAINTANCE MADE.

eyes on her, says, ‘ He has punished me—punished
me severely. I forgive her, and may God Almighty
forgive us both!’ With these words he dropped
back on the pillow, and his poor wife was so over-
come by what she heard, all so unexpectedly, that
she sank down as if she had been smitten, and when
she had strength to rise again—he wasa corpse! A
bitter feeling now came over her towards herself:
she had been angry with him—she had done her
duty to him only as duty, not as love. What would
she not have given then for one week, one hour, of
his past life! Ah, children, children!” said she,
addressing the two before her, “‘ never grieve those
you love; never lose an opportunity of doing a
kindness to those you love; never give way to
bitterness and hardness, else you will lay up a
punishment for yourselves which will pursue you as
with a whip of scorpions !”

A silence of a few minutes ensued. Jessie had
thrown herself back in a corner of the sofa, and
Williams sat staring at the old woman, who now,
as if with all her faculties awake, continued :—

“Some indistinct rumour reached the mother,
some time after her husband’s death, that her
daughter was in London; so she turned all the
little property that was left into money, and to
London she went. She went to London to find her
daughter. And how was her daughter to be found
among the thousands of other women’s daughters,
that were outcasts in society—-women with beauty,
talents, affections, all trampled under foot, viler than
the very mud of the streets! She went out on
the evenings of summer days, when the birds of
’ heaven were singing, and the dew lay as pure as