"There is only one person here who needs a pardon; but her fault is inexpiable: it is the woman who stooped beneath her--" With these words, hurled from her with a scorn which crushed while it galled, she mechanically drew round her form her black mantle; her eye glanced on the deep mourning of the garment, and her memory recalled all that love had cost her; but she added no other reproach.

Slowly she turned away.

Passing Susan, who lay senseless in Mrs.Fielden's arms, she paused, and kissed her forehead.
"When she recovers, madam," she said to Mrs.Fielden, who was moved and astonished by this softness, "say that Lucretia Clavering uttered a vow when she kissed the brow of William Mainwaring's future wife!" Olivier Dalibard was still seated in the parlour below when Lucretia entered.

Her face yet retained its almost unearthly rigidity and calm; but a sort of darkness had come over its ashen pallor,--that shade so indescribable, which is seen in the human face, after long illness, a day or two before death.

Dalibard was appalled; for he had too often seen that hue in the dying not to recognize it now.