“Lady,” cried the girl, sinking on her knees, “dear, sweet, angel lady, you are the first that ever blessed me with such words as these, and if I had heard them years ago, they might have turned me from a life of sin and sorrow; but it is too late, it is too late!”
“It is never too late,” said Rose, “for penitence and atonement.”
“It is,” cried the girl, writhing in agony of her mind; “I cannot leave him now! I could not be his death.”
“Why should you be?” asked Rose.
“Nothing could save him,” cried the girl. “If I told others what I have told you, and led to their being taken, he would be sure to die. He is the boldest, and has been so cruel!”
“Is it possible,” cried Rose, “that for such a man as this, you can resign every future hope, and the certainty of immediate rescue? It is madness.”
“I don’t know what it is,” answered the girl; “I only know that it is so, and not with me alone, but with hundreds of others as bad and wretched as myself. I must go back. Whether it is God’s wrath for the wrong I have done, I do not know; but I am drawn back to him through every suffering and ill usage; and I should be, I believe, if I knew that I was to die by his hand at last.”