“‘Catherine,’ he said, in a voice that trembled, spite of all his efforts to be composed, ‘I meet you now for the last time. I shall return to England, never again, I hope, to visit this country. This is your home for life, if you wish to make it so. I have settled upon you an annuity; and these papers, which I leave here upon the table, will give you all necessary information in regard to the manner of drawing it. I will not upbraid you for what you have done, for I do not wish to add a single pang to the thousands you must suffer; I would rather mitigate than increase them.’
“‘My children,’ she said, in an eager voice, as he paused, ‘where are they—am I not to see them?’
“‘But two remain,’ Belmont replied, ‘and you cannot see them. You are dead to your children, and must remain so. Catherine is in heaven. She died, to all appearance, of a broken heart, a few days after you went away.’
“The whole frame of this wretched woman quivered.
“‘Dead!’ she ejaculated, in a deep, hoarse whisper; and then covering her face, wept for some moments violently.
“‘But Mary and Ellen,’ she at length said, looking up with streaming eyes. ‘May I not see them? They are my children, Edward, and, erring and sinful as I have been, I still love them. Do not, then, in mercy, deny me this, the only boon I will ever ask at your hands. Oh! Edward, let me see my children once before I die.’
“Belmont was deeply moved, but his purpose did not falter.
“‘You are dead to them, Catherine,’ he replied, with assumed coldness, ‘and must remain so.’
“Even on her knees the wretched woman prayed to see her children; but she prayed in vain. Hard as it was for Belmont to resist her agonized entreaties, he remained firm to his well-formed purpose.
“The moment of parting with her, and leaving her in loneliness and misery on the very spot where she had once been so happy, and with a thousand things around her to remind her of that happiness, was a most painful one. It was with difficulty that Belmont could restrain the desire he felt to take her in his arms, press her to his bosom, and forgive and forget all. But her sin had been too deep—she had fallen too low. He could not throw over the past the blessed mantle of forgiveness; and so he left her alone, to shiver by the cold ashes of a darkened hearth.”