And, in the same hour, Maud was upon her knees, in
the silence of her own chamber, shedding tears which
were at once both sweet and bitter, in her heart a
tumult of emotion, joy and thanksgiving at strife
with those dark powers which shadowed her existence.
She had do doubts of the completeness and persistency
of her love. But was not this love a sin, and
its very strength the testimony of her soul’s
loss?
SLIMY’S DAY
Waymark had written to Ida just after her imprisonment
began, a few words of such comfort as he could send.
No answer came; perhaps the prison rules prevented
it. When the term was drawing to a close, he
wrote again, to let her know that he would meet her
on the morning of her release.
It would be on a Tuesday morning. As the time
drew near, Waymark did his best to think of the matter
quietly. The girl had no one else to help her;
it would have been brutality to withdraw and leave
her to her fate, merely because he just a little feared
the effect upon himself of such a meeting. And
the feeling on her side? Well, that he could
not pretend to be ignorant of, and, in spite of everything,
there was still the same half-acknowledged pleasure
in the thought. He tried to persuade himself
that he should have the moral courage to let her as
soon as possible understand his new position; he also
tried to believe that this would not involve any serious
shock to Ida. For all that, he knew only too
well that man is “ein erbarmlicher Schuft,”
and there was always the possibility that he might
say nothing of what had happened, and let things take
their course.
On the Monday he was already looking forward to the
meeting with restlessness. Could he have foreseen
that anything would occur to prevent his keeping his
promise, it would have caused him extreme anxiety.
But such a possibility never entered his thoughts,
and, shortly before mid-day, he went down to collect
his rents as usual.
The effect of a hard winter was seen in the decrease
of the collector’s weekly receipts. The
misery of cold and starvation was growing familiar
to Waymark’s eyes, and scarcely excited the same
feelings as formerly; yet there were some cases in
which he had not the heart to press for the payment
of rent, and his representations to Mr. Woodstock
on behalf of the poor creatures were more frequently
successful than in former times. Still, in the
absence of then but eviction, and Waymark more than
once knew what ideal philanthropy, there was nothing
for it every now and it was to be cursed to his face
by suffering wretches whom despair made incapable
of discrimination. “Where are we to go?”
was the oft-repeated question, and the only reply
was a shrug of the shoulders; impossible to express
oneself otherwise. They clung desperately to
habitations so vile that brutes would have forsaken
them for cleaner and warmer retreats in archway and
