“Oh, have some mercy on me!” cried Emily. “Show me some compassion, or I shall die mad!”
“It would be no great penance,” said Rosa Dartle, “for your crimes. Do you know what you have done? Do you ever think of the home you have laid waste?”
“Oh, is there ever night or day, when I don’t think of it!” cried Emily; and now I could just see her, on her knees, with her head thrown back, her pale face looking upward, her hands wildly clasped and held out, and her hair streaming about her. “Has there ever been a single minute, waking or sleeping, when it hasn’t been before me, just as it used to be in the lost days when I turned my back upon it forever and forever! Oh, home, home! Oh dear, dear uncle, if you ever could have known the agony your love would cause me when I fell away from good, you never would have shown it to me so constant, much as you felt it; but would have been angry to me, at least once in my life, that I might have had some comfort! I have