‘that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me; was so gentle to me; didn’t shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me such kind help! Was it you, sir?’

‘It was,’ said I.

‘I should have been in the river long ago,’ she said, glancing at it with a terrible expression, ‘if any wrong to her had been upon my mind.

I never could have kept out of it a single winter’s night, if I had not been free of any share in that!’

‘The cause of her flight is too well understood,’ I said. ‘You are innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe, — we know.’

‘Oh, I might have been much the better for her, if I had had a better heart!’