"Lucy, my dear, it seems to me that you may put away these thoughts now. God has been merciful and cleared it to you, you say; and you ought to be happy."
"Oh, so merciful!" she sobbed. "So happy! But it might have been otherwise, and I cannot forget, or forgive myself."
"Do you remember, Lucy, what I said? That some day when the cloud was removed your heart would go up with a bound of joyous thankfulness?"
"Yes. Because I did--and have done--as Margaret told me; and endured."
The affair had indeed laid no slight hold of Lucy. She could not forget what might have been the result, and quite an exaggerated remorse set in.
A few nights afterwards Karl was startled out of his sleep by her. She had awakened, it appeared, in a state of terror, and had turned to him with a nervous grasp as of one who is drowning. Shaking, sobbing, moaning, she frightened her husband. He would have risen for a light, but she clung to him too tightly.
"But what has alarmed you, Lucy--what is it?" he reiterated.
"A dream, Karl; a dream," she sobbed, in her bitter distress. "I am always thinking of it by day, but this time I dreamt it; and I awoke believing it was true."
"Dreamt what?" he asked.
"I thought that cruel time was back again. I thought that I had not been quiet and patient, as Margaret enjoined, leaving vengeance to God, but had taken it into my own hands, and so had caused the Maze's secret to be discovered. You and Adam had both died through it; and I was left all alone to my dreadful repentance, on some barren place surrounded by turbid water."