If you
are come to talk of him, begone!'
As he spoke he resumed his walk, and hurried round the court as before.
When he came again to where she stood, he stopped, and said,
'Am I to live or die? Do you repent?'
'Oh!--do YOU?' she answered. 'Will you, while time remains? Do not
believe that I could save you, if I dared.'
'Say if you would,' he answered with an oath, as he tried to disengage
himself and pass on. 'Say if you would.'
'Listen to me for one moment,' she returned; 'for but a moment. I am but
newly risen from a sick-bed, from which I never hoped to rise again. The
best among us think, at such a time, of good intentions half-performed
and duties left undone. If I have ever, since that fatal night, omitted
to pray for your repentance before death--if I omitted, even then,
anything which might tend to urge it on you when the horror of your
crime was fresh--if, in our later meeting, I yielded to the dread that
was upon me, and forgot to fall upon my knees and solemnly adjure you,
in the name of him you sent to his account with Heaven, to prepare for
the retribution which must come, and which is stealing on you now--I
humbly before you, and in the agony of supplication in which you see me,
beseech that you will let me make atonement.
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