satanic nature, that I can say to you—­you who blasted all my earthly happiness—­I forgive you my sufferings, and hope that God will give you that pardon and comfort which after awful conflicts I have found at last.  Several times you have thrust yourself into my presence; but if there remains any womanly delicacy in your nature you will avoid me henceforth when I tell you that I loath the sight of one whose unwomanliness stabbed my trust in womanhood, and sunk me so low that I lost Edna Earl.  Agnes, go yonder—­where I have spent so many hours of agony—­yonder to the graves of your victims as well as mine.  Go down on your knees yonder, and pray for yourself, and may God help you!”

He pointed to the gray vault and the slab that covered Annie and Murray Hammond; and disengaging her fingers, which still clutched his sleeve, he turned quickly and walked away.

Her mournful eyes, strained wide and full of tears, followed him till his form was no longer visible; and sinking down on the monument—­whence she had risen at his approach—­she shrouded her fair, delicate features, and rocked herself to and fro.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

“How lovely!  Oh!  I did not think there was any place half so beautiful this side of heaven!”

With his head on his mother’s bosom, Felix lay near the window of an upper room, looking out over the Gulf of Genoa.

The crescent curve of the olive-mantled Apennines girdled the city in a rocky clasp, and mellowed by distance and the magic enamelling of evening light, each particular peak rose against the chrysoprase sky like a pyramid of lapis lazuli, around whose mighty base rolled soft waves of golden haze.

Over the glassy bosom of the gulf, where glided boats filled with gay, pleasure-seeking Italians, floated the merry strains of a barcarole, with the silvery echo of “Fidulin” keeping time with the silvery gleam of the dipping oars.

  “And the sun went into the west, and down
   Upon the water stooped an orange cloud,
   And the pale milky reaches flushed, as glad
   To wear its colors; and the sultry air
   Went out to sea, and puffed the sails of ships
   With thymy wafts, the breath of trodden grass.”

“Lift me up, mamma! higher, higher yet.  I want to see the sun.  There! it has gone—­gone down into the sea.  I can’t bear to see it set to-day.  It seemed to say good-bye to me just then.  Oh, mamma, mamma!  I don’t want to die.  The world is so beautiful, and life is so sweet up here in the sunshine and the starlight, and it is so cold and dark down there in the grave.  Oh! where is Edna?  Tell her to come quick and sing something to me.”

The cripple shuddered and shut his eyes.  He had wasted away, until he looked a mere shadow of humanity, and his governess stooped and took him from his mother’s arms as if he were a baby.

“Edna, talk to me!  Oh! don’t let me get afraid to die.  I—­”