"Why do you ask me such a question?"
"Because," I said, too much absorbed in my own trouble to heed her agitation, "because I am very miserable, and don't know exactly what to do; I am sure he is the only one who can help me, and I must tell him before I sleep to-night, if only I can get the courage! Oh, Mrs. Arnold! tell me, is he very severe? Or will he be kind—and would you dare, if you were me?"
"I cannot tell what trouble you have on your mind, but I can answer for it, if human help can lighten it, Mr. Shenstone will give you all the help he can. And if it is but between you and heaven, he will show you the way to get at peace. Oh, my dear young lady! you need not be afraid to open your heart to one who knows so much about God's mercy and men's sins. You need not be afraid but that he will be as tender as he is wise; indeed, you need not fear him."
She spoke rapidly and earnestly; her whole manner of precision and composure seemed to be broken down and melted before some recollection that my trouble seemed to recall. I laid my burning hand in hers, and said with a sigh:
"Oh, if I only dared!"
"But why should you fear?" she continued, earnestly. "Why should you fear, when I tell you that he has only kindness and pity in his heart—that he has looked with forbearance and compassion on blacker sins than ever stained your young soul; and when I tell you—for I have reason to know—that he can bring light out of darkness, and can show a way of peace to even the most tortured and despairing. It may," she continued, "be but a very little sin that is weighing on you, and turning you out of the right way; but from little sins grow heavy punishments, and better find now the best way of putting it out of your heart, and putting something good in its stead. You have all life before you," she said, with a weary sigh, "and repentance is easier and more hopeful work, than it is to come back, when one has spent one's inheritance of life in sin, having nothing to offer heaven but fruitless tears."
Her voice trembled with emotion; she looked pityingly at me as, struggling to keep back my tears, I hid my face in the pillow, and caressing the hand that still lay in hers, she went on to persuade me to the only remedy she knew for my unhappiness. I still felt shudderingly afraid to make the dreadful effort, and faltered something about my fear of his goodness and superiority, and the contempt he would feel for me when he knew how weak and sinful I had been.
"Would it give you courage," she said, in a low tone, "to know how he once received the repentance of a very miserable woman—a woman who had not only sinned against heaven, but against him—who had done more than any one else to blight his happiness and make his life desolate, but who, having met the due reward of her deeds, came back to die in misery where she had failed to live in innocence? Shall I tell you of this?"
I whispered "Yes," and she went on in a low voice:
"It is no matter what the sins were that brought me to the misery I shall tell you of; it is no matter whether they were committed for myself, or for the love of one whom I would have died to serve; it is no matter for me to tell you that they grew from little unchecked thoughts of pride and self-will, and little half-intended acts of deception, into the monster sins that overshadowed my life; it is enough that I had come to the recompense of them—that in remorse, in utter consternation, I mourned as one without hope. What did I know of hope? Six feet of foreign mound covered the remains of her I had served and sinned for. Shame and infamy covered her name; hope was dead in my heart; faith had never been lit there. Alone in a land of strangers, there was but one longing in my breast that exceeded the desire for death, and that was the craving to see home again. It makes me shudder even now to recall that journey—weary months of fatigue, and exposure and misery; the only thought that kept me up, a dreary one at best, to see home once more, and die before a word of reproach could stab me, or a familiar voice recall the wretched past.