The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals

THE OLD COUNTESS; OR, THE TWO PROPOSALS. BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS. AUTHOR OF LORD HOPE'S CHOICE, THE REIGNING BELLE, MARRIED IN HASTE, MABEL'S MISTAKE, DOUBLY FALSE, WIVES AND WIDOWS, MARY DERWENT, THE REJECTED WIFE, THE SOLDIER'S ORPHANS, THE OLD HOMESTEAD, FASHION AND FAMINE, THE HEIRESS, RUBY GRAY'S STRATEGY, THE CURSE OF GOLD, SILENT STRUGGLES, THE WIFE'S SECRET, PALACES AND PRISONS, THE GOLD BRICK, A NOBLE WOMAN.
During fourteen years Hepworth Closs had been a wanderer over the earth.
When he was carried out from the court-room after Mrs. Yates' confession of a crime which he had shrinkingly believed committed by another, he had fainted from the suddenness with which a terrible load had been lifted from his soul.
In that old woman's guilt he had no share. It swept the blackness from the marriage he had protested against as hideously wicked. The wrong he had done was divested of the awful responsibilities which had seemed more than he could bear. The revelation had made him, comparatively, an innocent and free man. But a shock had been given to his whole being which unfitted him for the common uses of society.
After all that had passed through his mind he could not bear to think of joining his sister or husband. The keen feelings of a nature, not in its full development wicked or dishonorable, had been startled into life, when he saw into what a gulf he had almost plunged. He saw the sin and the wrong he had done in its true light, and not only repented of it, but abhorred it from the very depths of his soul. He longed to make atonement, and would have given ten years from his life for a chance by which he could have sacrificed himself to any one that poor murdered lady had loved.
These feelings rose up like a barrier between him and his sister. Her influence over his youth had been so powerful that his own better nature never might have asserted itself but for the tragedy which followed his first plunge into deception and wrong-doing. He loved this beautiful young woman yet, as few brothers of any age or class ever did; but the shock of that tragedy was on him, and his impulse was to flee from her and the man for whose sake all this trouble had come.