"Yes, I will try to forget you; and to forget how much I valued your friendship, or the friendship of the honourable man I took you for."
"I was that man, madam. Our friendship did not begin in treachery. I was your true and honourable friend—till—till the devil saw me in my foolish pride, my arrogant confidence in good works."
"Well, sir, 'tis a dream ended," she said, in those grave contralto tones that had ever been like music in his ear—the lower key to which her voice dropped when she was deeply moved; "and from to-night be good enough to remember that we are strangers."
"I shall not forget, madam, nor shall my presence make the future troublesome to you."
Something in his words scared her.
"You will do nothing violent—nothing desperately wicked?"
"No, madam, whatever the tempter whispers, however sweetly the river murmurs of rest and oblivion, I shall not kill myself. For me there is the 'something after death'!"
"Will you tell them to bring my coach?"
He rose and obeyed without a word, and stood by bareheaded till she drove away, not even offering to assist her as she stepped into the carriage, attended by her footman. Stobart stood watching till the chariot vanished in the darkness of the street beyond the bridge, then flung himself on the bench in the recess, and sat with his arms folded on the stone parapet, and his forehead leaning upon them, lost in despairing thoughts.
Judas, Judas, the companion of Christ, foredoomed to everlasting misery—Judas, the son of perdition! And what of him who six years ago gave himself to God—convinced of sin, sincerely repenting of the errors of his youth, resolved to lead a new life, to live in Christ and for Christ? How confident he had been, how happy in the assurance of grace—all his thoughts, all his desires in subjection to the Divine will, living not by the strict letter of Christ's law, but by every counsel of perfection, deeming no sacrifice of self too severe, no labour too exacting, in that heavenly service. And now, after that holy apprenticeship, after all those years of duty and obedience, after mounting so high upon the ladder of life, to find himself lying in the mire at the foot of it, caught in the toils of Satan, and again the slave of sin!