Page:Stories after Nature.pdf/106

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82
EDMUND AND EDWARD;

sweetly upon him, and then, looking sorrowful, went out with him, weeping all the way. And Edward's heart began to swell from that hour.

When she came to her mother's corpse she acted nothing; her misery was sharp, and when she thought upon the pain she had caused her mother, her despair was complete, and she sat as one mad.

When they had returned from burying her mother, she threw herself upon her knees before Edward, and looking on him said, "Heaven, sir, will return the good you have done me, so be that struck out of our account. Heaven and your own heart will understand between you. I am an excluded third. Believe me, sir, I now love you as greatly as you have loved me; be my loss my punishment. I do not ask you to be my fellow any longer; knowing that my foulness must have long made you pity, but not love me; and that you have laboured thus far, only to save my soul. You have done it, if Heaven will. I now ask you, as I am a poor abandoned outcast, to put me in some way to live honestly, that I rust not with idleness, nor perish for want; and to see me sometimes."

But Edward knew that his hope had long swam with a false bottom; and being determined on proving her, said, "Madam, we that