Oh, good Lord, merciful Lord, at last! Oh, if you knew what it was to have even one weight lifted off, among all my heavy burdens, and that weight the hardest to bear.

God forgive me that it should have been so! Oh, I can breathe freely now again, that I know I am not suspected by you." "By you ?" Tom could not but see what, after all, no human being can conceal, that Grace cared for him.

And the devil came and tempted him once more: but this time it was in vain.

Tom's better angel had returned; Grace's tender guilelessness, which would with too many men only have marked her out as the easier prey, was to him as a sacred shield before her innocence.

So noble, so enthusiastic, so pure! He could not play the villain with that woman.
But there was plainly a mystery.