may God desert me and him, when I fail through negligence or
hardness of heart.

"And if at times the stigma of his birth should present itself to
irritate your mind against his helpless innocence, as alas! I have
latterly witnessed, smite him not, Greville, in your guilty wrath--
remember he is come of gentle blood, even on his mother's side--and
ask yourself to _whom_ we owe our degradation, and from whose quiver
the arrow was launched against us? And now farewell--may the Almighty
enlighten and forgive you--and if in this address there appears a
trace of bitterness, do not ascribe it to any uncharitable feelings,
but look back upon the past, and think on what I was--on what I am.
Consider whether ever woman loved or trusted as I have done, or was
ever more cruelly betrayed? Oh! Greville, Greville!--did I not regard
you with an affection too intense for my happiness! did I not confide
in you with a reverence, a veneration unmeet to be lavished on a
creature of clay? But you have broken the fragile idol of my worship
before my eyes--and the after-path of my life is dark with fear and
loneliness. But be it so; my soul was proud of its good gifts--and
now that I am stricken to the dust, its vanity is laid bare to my
sight--haply, 'it is good for me that I have been afflicted.'--
Farewell for ever."


The conditions of this letter were mutually and strictly fulfilled;
but the mental struggle sustained by Lord Greville, his humiliation
on witnessing the saintlike self-devotion of Helen Percy, combined
with the necessity which rendered it expedient to accept her
proffered sacrifice, were too much for his frame. In less than a
year after his return to Silsea, he died--a prey to remorse.