vexation of calamity which guilt has brought upon him!

"Consider, Princess, what would have been your condition if the
Lady Pekuah had entreated to accompany you, and, being compelled to
stay in the tents, had been carried away; or how would you have
borne the thought if you had forced her into the Pyramid, and she
had died before you in agonies of terror?"

"Had either happened," said Nekayah, "I could not have endured life
till now; I should have been tortured to madness by the remembrance
of such cruelty, or must have pined away in abhorrence of myself."

"This, at least," said Imlac, "is the present reward of virtuous
conduct, that no unlucky consequence can oblige us to repent it."



CHAPTER XXXV--THE PRINCESS LANGUISHES FOR WANT OF PEKUAH.



Nekayah, being thus reconciled to herself, found that no evil is
insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of
wrong. She was from that time delivered from the violence of
tempestuous sorrow, and sunk into silent pensiveness and gloomy
tranquillity. She sat from morning to evening recollecting all
that had been done or said by her Pekuah, treasured up with care
every trifle on which Pekuah had set an accidental value, and which
might recall to mind any little incident or careless conversation.
The sentiments of her whom she now expected to see no more were