VII.
Peace.
It is a dream,—fearful, to be sure, but only a dream! Madge is true. That soul is honest; it could not be otherwise. God never made it to be false; He never made the sun for darkness.
And before the evening has waned to midnight, sweet day has broken on your gloom;—Madge is folded to your bosom, sobbing fearfully,—not for guilt, or any shadow of guilt, but for the agony she reads upon your brow, and in your low sighs.
The mystery is all cleared by a few lightning words from her indignant lips, and her whole figure trembles, as she shrinks within your embrace, with the thought of that great evil that seemed to shadow you. The villain has sought by every art to beguile her into appearances which should compromise her character and so wound her delicacy as to take away the courage for return; he has even wrought upon her affection for you as his master-weapon: a skilfully contrived story of some accident that had befallen you, had wrought upon her—to the sudden and silent leave of home. But he has failed. At the first suspicion of his falsity, her dignity and virtue shivered all his malice. She shudders at the bare thought of that fiendish scheme which has so lately broken on her view.
"Oh, Clarence, Clarence, could you for one moment believe this of me?"
"Dear Madge, forgive me if a dreamy horror did for an instant palsy my better thought;—it is gone utterly; it will never, never come again!"
And there she leans with her head pillowed on your shoulder, the same sweet angel that has led you in the way of light, and who is still your blessing and your pride.
He—and you forbear to name his name—is gone,—flying vainly from the consciousness of guilt with the curse of Cain upon him,—hastening toward the day when Satan shall clutch his own!