Her voice faltered, then entirely failed, and for the first time in her life the once haughty Minnette wept.
"Tears are strange visitors to these eyes," she said, with a sad smile; "there may be hope for me yet, since I can weep for the past. Louis, in a few weeks I will enter a convent, and the remainder of my life shall be spent in praying for you and Celeste, and the rest of my friends. And now you must leave me—farewell, a last farewell, dear Louis. Tell them all at home how I have learned to love them at last, and ask them to forgive poor Minnette."
He could not speak; she made a sign for him to go. Raising the thin, pale hand to his lips, and casting one long, last look on the sad, yet peaceful face of the once beautiful Minnette, he quitted the room. And thus they parted, these two, never to meet in life again.
Meantime, we must revisit St. Mark's, and witness the startling events that are bringing matters to a rapid denouement there.
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE DEATH-BED CONFESSION.
"Her wretched brain gave way,
And she became a wreck, at random driven,
Without one glimpse of reason or of Heaven."
t was a bleak, stormy December evening, a week before Christmas. A bright fire was burning in the well-known parlor of Sunset Hall.