"Amen," he said, and left the room. Mary was about to follow him, when a look of entreaty from Lady Sackvil checked her. In another instant Amelia was crouching on the ground, her face buried in the folds of Mary's gown. There was dead silence in the room. The ticking of the Louis Quatorze clock on the mantel and the flap of a window-curtain were the only sounds to be heard. Charity pleaded for the wretched woman kneeling at her feet. Nature cried, "Follow him; tear from him some consolation; make him wake you from this nightmare, and say he loves you!" Charity conquered. Mary bent over Lady Sackvil to raise her from the ground; but at the first touch, Amelia lifted her head, exclaiming, "I will never rise; I will die here unless you say you forgive me!"
"How can you ask pardon," replied Mary "for an injury you have only just completed?"
Amelia crouched still nearer to the ground.
"So help me heaven!" she said in a voice of agony, "I never meant to speak. He came to-day—oh! you who possess him, can't you see how it happened; how I forgot every thing—resolutions, dignity, decency—and spoke?"
"Why do you say I possess him?" asked Mary bitterly. "You heard him say that you had turned away his heart from me."
"I have not turned it toward myself. He repulsed me like a dog. Oh! if there were a hole underground where I could hide, I would crawl into it." And she flung herself on her face with a despairing groan.
Mary knelt down beside her. "We are both in the presence of God," she said; "and I forgive you now even as I hope to be forgiven."
Amelia rose with difficulty, made an effort to reach the bedroom door, tottered, and would have fallen but for Mary's assistance, who unlocked the door and helped her to a sofa. Then, looking round the room for some restorative, her eye rested on a little vial standing in a crimson wine-glass. She took it up and saw that it was labelled "laudanum."
"Have you taken any of this?" she asked, carrying it to the sofa.