of the living woman. They knelt down together
beside her, and waited for her to speak. It was
some time before she moved or uttered a word.
At length she raised her arm feebly, took Lily's
hand, and placed it in that of Constant.

"Protect her," she said; "I leave her to
your care.''

"I accept the trust," Constant replied,
solemnly.

After a pause, the countess turned her eyes
towards Lily, and said, "Withdraw for a little,
and leave us—alone."

Lily rose from her knees, blinded with tears,
leaving the room, dazed, stupified; filled with a
strange wonder.

When the door was closed, the countess
roused herself a little, and grasped Constant's
hand almost fiercely.

"Can you forgive me?" she said, despairingly.
"Can you—can you forgive me?"

"Yes, yes," he said; "I can—I do!"

"All?" she asked, eagerly.

"All; everything, everything. Oh, Valérie,
Valérie!"

"I have been very wicked, Jean Baptiste, very
ungrateful, very cruel, very heartless; but—but
it was not my fault. It was born in me, whipped
into me, beaten into me with kicks and blows.
The devil has been in me from my birth, and
held possession of me from first to last. Had
he left me for one moment, I might have
requited your kindness and been your wife, and
we might have been happy now in France. But
the devil which possessed me made me proud,
ambitious, ungrateful, and wicked, and he has
hurried me on to this dreadful end among
strangers in a foreign land. Had I been born
with a good spirit in me, Jean Baptiste, I should
have been good and virtuous, I should have
been grateful, I should have returned your love
and care, and we might have been happy now in
France."

She paused frequently while she murmured
these words, laying her hand upon her side, and
moaning with a wail of anguish.

"I know," she continued, "I have been very,
very wicked; but could I help it, Jean Baptiste?
Can wheat grow where only tares have been
sown; can flowers spring up from a soil rank
with the roots of weeds? You sent me to
school to be taught, to learn to be good; but it
was too late, the evil spirit came with my first
breath. I have been possessed, Jean Baptiste,
possessed by the devil all my life; and now, oh
Heaven! what shall I do, what shall I do?"

A sudden paroxysm seized her, and she
clutched fiercely at the bed-clothes, as if she
were struggling with death. When she grew
calmer, Constant took her hand gently, and said:

"Pray, Valérie; pray to Heaven to forgive
you."

"I cannot pray," she said. "It is so long
since I have prayed. I have forgotten how to
pray. Oh, mercy, mercy." She gasped for
breath, and again clutched at the bed-clothes
fiercely.

Constant rose and went to the door and
beckoned to Lily. She entered the room with
a scared look upon her face, timidly. Constant,
took her by the hand and led her to the bedside.
Her mother turned and saw her, and grasped at
her hand as if for rescue.

"My child," she said, "you are good, you are
innocent, you have learned to pray; pray for
me, pray for me." She drew Lily's little hand
towards her, and implored her with kisses.

And Lily knelt down by the bedside, clasped
her hands, and prayed for her mother, looking
upwards through her tears, and beseeching God
to pardon her all her sins for the Saviour's sake.
The worn, crushed, sin-burdened woman caught
at the last blessed words of the prayer, and
repeated them again and again, eagerly clinging
to them with her failing breath and faltering
tongue, until she floated away from earth upon
the raft of promise which her child had launched
into the sea of her despair.

CHAPTER LVII. DUST TO DUST.

LILY was once more Quite Alone—alone
with her dead mother in the Cottage in the
Gardens of Ranelagh.

The mystery of her mother's dying words had
been explained to her by Jean Baptiste Constant.
He repeated to her, with many merciful reservations,
the Idyll of Marouille-le-Gency, which
the reader knows. Lily was rather afraid of
the strange-looking man at first; but when she
knew all, and heard from his trembling lips the
story of his early love for her mother, of his
devotion to her father, and of his care for herself
in the days of her childhood, she gave him her
complete confidence, and accepted his guardianship
gladly. For she knew now that he had been a
father to her—the only father she had ever had.
Constant was anxious—eagerly anxious—that
she should at once leave the Cottage and take
up her abode at Pomeroy's Hotel in Great
Grand-street, of which he was the proprietor. Sir
William Long also urged her to leave the
Cottage and go to Pomeroy's. But she
declined for the present; and begged to be
allowed to remain, to perform the last offices to
her mother.

Seeing that she was resolved upon this, they
refrained from pressing her further.

"Perhaps it will be better," Sir William
whispered to Constant, "to withhold the
disclosure until after the funeral. Does he know?"

"Not yet," Constant replied.

"In that case," said the baronet, "it will be
well to say nothing to him either. Both must
be prepared for it."

"I thought of leaving it to a chance meeting,"
Constant replied. "He is a singular man."

"And might prefer to be guided by his own
impulses."

"Yes," said Constant, "that is my
impression."

"You know him best," returned the baronet;
"do as you think fit."

Lily observed this whispered conversation,
and connecting it with the proposition which had
been made to her, wondered why both Sir