breathing, which had been like that of sinless infancy, was now
frightfully short and quick; she seemed not properly to breathe, but to
gasp. This, thought I, may be sudden agitation, and in that case she
will gradually recover; half an hour will restore her. Wo is me! she
did _not_ recover; and internally I said--she never _will_
recover. The arrows have gone too deep for a frame so exquisite in its
sensibility, and already her hours are numbered.

At this first visit I said nothing to her about the past; _that_,
and the whole extent to which our communications should go, I left
rather to her own choice. At the second visit, however, upon some word
or other arising which furnished an occasion for touching on this
hateful topic, I pressed her, contrary to my own previous intention,
for as full an account of the fatal event as she could without a
distressing effort communicate. To my surprise she was silent--
gloomily--almost it might have seemed obstinately silent. A horrid
thought came into my mind; could it, might it have been possible that
my noble-minded wife, such she had ever seemed to me, was open to
temptations of this nature? Could it have been that in some moment of
infirmity, when her better angel was away from her side, she had
yielded to a sudden impulse of frailty, such as a second moment for
consideration would have resisted, but which unhappily had been
followed by no such opportunity of retrieval? I had heard of such
things. Cases there were in our own times (and not confined to one
nation), when irregular impulses of this sort were known to have
haunted and besieged natures not otherwise ignoble and base. I ran over
some of the names amongst those which were taxed with this propensity.
More than one were the names of people in a technical sense held noble.
That, nor any other consideration abated my horror. Better, I said,
better, (because more compatible with elevation of mind,) better to