(into which I have neither the right nor the wish to inquire) feel unwilling to take the course I have pointed out, do not by any means consider it your duty to accede to my proposal. I can conscientiously assure you that duty is not involved in it. > > I have, however, another suggestion to make, which is of a positive nature, and which I am sure will meet with your approval. It is, that her parents, or some of her other relations, if her parents are not alive, should be informed of her situation. Possibly, you may know something of her connections, and can therefore do this good office. She is dying in a strange place, among people who avoid her as they would avoid a pestilence. Even though it be only to bury her, some relation ought to be immediately summoned to her bedside. > > I shall visit her twice tomorrow, in the morning and at night. If you are not willing to risk seeing her (and I repeat that it is in no sense imperative that
When the letter fell from my trembling hand, when I first asked of my own heart the fearful question:—“Have I, to whom the mere thought of ever seeing this woman again has been as a pollution to shrink from, the strength to stand by her deathbed, the courage to see her die?”—then, and not till then, did I really know how suffering had fortified, while it had humbled me; how affliction has the power to purify, as well as to pain.
All bitter memory of the ill that she had done me, of the misery I had suffered at her hands, lost its hold on my mind. Once more, her mother’s last words of earthly lament—“Oh, who will pray for her when I am