“Bid the demons recommence their torture,” was poor Ida’s answer.
“And was it for this that thou added a thousand years to thy doom?”
“Alas!” answered Ida, “after the single hour I have endured on Earth, there seems to be but little terrible in a thousand fresh years of Purgatory!”*
* This story is principally borrowed from a foreign soil. It
seemed to the author worthy of being transferred to an English
one, although he fears that much of its singular beauty in the
original has been lost by the way.
“What! is the story ended?” asked Gertrude.
“Yes.”
“Nay, surely the thousand years were not added to poor Ida’s doom; and Seralim bore her back with him to Heaven?”
“The legend saith no more. The writer was contented to show us the perpetuity of woman’s love—”
“And its reward,” added Vane.
“It was not I who drew that last conclusion, Albert,” whispered Gertrude.