’You did, Henry, but it did not satisfy me; I felt that you did not know all.’

‘I fear you have been very unhappy,’ I said.

’I have been constantly thinking of Winifred a beggar in the streets as described by Wilderspin.  Oh, Henry, I used to think of her in the charge of that woman.  And Miss Dalrymple, who educated her, tells me that in culture she was far above the girls of her own class; and this makes the degradation into which she was forced through me the more dreadful for me to think of.  I used to think of her dying in the squalid den, and then the Italian sunshine has seemed darker than a London fog.  Even the comfort that your kind words gave me was incomplete, for you did not know the worst features of my cruelty.’

’But have you had no respite, mother?  Surely the intensity of this pain did not last, or it would have killed you.’

’The crisis did pass, for, as you say, had it lasted in its most intense form, it would have killed me or sent me mad.  After a while, though remorse was always with me, I seemed to become in some degree numbed against its sting.  I could bear at last to live, but that was all.  Yet there was always one hour out of the twenty-four when I was overmastered by pathetic memories, such as nearly killed me with pity—­one hour when, in a sudden and irresistible storm, grief would still come upon me with almost its old power.  This was on awaking in the early morning.  I learnt then that if there is trouble at the founts of life, there is nothing which stirs that trouble like the twitter of the birds at dawn.  At Florence, I would, after spending the day in wandering with you through picture galleries or about those lovely spots near Fiesole, go to bed at night tolerably calm; I would sink into a sleep, haunted no longer by those dreams of the tragedy in which my part had been so cruel, and yet the very act of waking in the morning would bring upon me a whirlwind of anguish; and then would come the struggling light at the window, and the twitter of the birds that seemed to say, “Poor child, poor child!” and I would bury my face in my pillow and moan.’

When I looked in her face, I realised for the first time that not even such a passion of pity as that which had aged me is so cruel in its ravages as Remorse.  To gaze at her was so painful that I turned my eyes away.

When I could speak I said,

’I have forgiven you from the bottom of my heart, mother, but, if that does not give you comfort, is there anything that will?’

’Nothing, Henry, nothing but what is impossible for me ever to get—­the forgiveness of the wronged child herself. That I can never get in this world.  I dare only hope that by prayers and tears I may get it in the end.  Oh, Henry, if I were in heaven I could never rest until I had sought her out, and found her and thrown myself on her neck and said, “Forgive your persecutor, my dear, or this is no place for me."’