The prisoner started abruptly at these words. "What is her name?" demanded he, quickly.
"I do not know," answered the man. "She did not tell me; but she seemed mighty impatient for an answer to her request."
The prisoner bowed his head and sat in silence several moments. At length he said, "Bring her in! I have a curiosity to know what woman would penetrate these walls to seek an interview with me."
The jailer disappeared. In a few moments footsteps were heard along the dark passage, a female form was ushered into the cheerless apartment, and the lock turned harshly upon her. Then a white hand was laid lightly on the bright curling locks of the bowed head, and a low voice whispered in the ear of the incarcerated man, "It is a pitiful heart that forgets a friend in adversity."
"Louise!" said the prisoner, shrinking away with evident pain from her touch. "Why are you here?"
"To cheer you,—to comfort you," said she, earnestly regarding his pale, handsome features.
But he turned away from her gaze, shaking his head mournfully. "This is the deepest humiliation I have yet endured," he said, while a creeping shudder convulsed his frame. "To feel those clear eyes fastened upon me, piercing through and through my soul, and reading all the guilt and crime that's written there. O, Louise! was it not enough to drive me, by your unrelenting scorn and bitterness, to commit the act which has brought me here, without seeking to torment your victim by penetrating his dungeon to mock at the misfortune your own cruelty occasioned?"
He raised his pale, distressed face imploringly to hers as he ceased to speak; but she started back from her position at his side, and with an angry accent said, "I do not understand how any fell influence of mine should cause you to break the heart of an innocent woman by your guilty conduct with another."
"I did not seek to refer the blame of those early sins to any influence of yours," he answered. "How could I, when they were committed before your birth? In the very dust I acknowledge those deeds of villany and vileness. But too late is my grief and repentance. The blow has fallen, and my doom is fixed."
He leaned his arms forward upon the table, and, sinking his head upon them, uttered a low groan of hopeless, despairing misery.