"Forgive? Oh, Philip! what have I to forgive?"
"The deed that locked you in prison darkness," he mournfully replied.
"Philip!" exclaimed Emily, "could you for one moment believe that I attributed that to you?—that I blamed you, for an instant?"
"Not willingly, I am sure, dear Emily. But, oh, you have forgotten that in your time of anguish, not only the obtruding thought but the lip that gave utterance to it, proclaimed how you refused to forgive the cruel hand that wrought you so much woe!"
"You cruel, Philip! Never did I so abuse and wrong you. If my unfilial heart sinfully railed against the cruel injustice of my father, it was never guilty of such treachery towards you."
"That fiendish woman lied, then, when she told me that you shuddered at my very name?"
"If I shuddered, Philip, it was because I recoiled at the thought of the wrong you had sustained; and oh, believe me, if she gave you any other assurance than of my continued love, it was because she laboured under a sad error."
"Good heavens!" ejaculated Philip; "how wickedly have I been deceived!"
"Not wickedly," replied Emily. "Mrs. Ellis was in that instance the victim of circumstances. She was a stranger among us, and believed you other than you were; but, had you seen her a few weeks later, sobbing over her share in the unhappy transaction which drove you to desperation, and as we then supposed to death, you would have felt that we had misjudged her, and that she carried a heart of flesh beneath a stony disguise. The bitterness of her grief was united with remorse at the recollection of her own harshness. Let us forget the sad events of the past, and trust that the loving hand which has thus far shaped our course has but afflicted us in mercy."
"In mercy!" exclaimed Philip. "What mercy does my past experience give evidence of, or your life of everlasting darkness? Can you believe it a loving hand which made me the ill-fated instrument, and you the life-long sufferer, from one of the dreariest misfortunes that can afflict humanity?"