The curate rose, took up her bag, went with her to the station, got
her ticket, and saw her off.

Then he hastened back to Drew, and told him the whole story.

"Poor woman!" said her husband. "--But God only knows how much _I_
am to blame for all this. If I had behaved better to her she might
never have left me, and your poor young friend would now be well and
happy."

"Perhaps consuming his soul to a cinder with that odious drug," said
Wingfold. "'Tis true, as Edgar in King Lear says:

The gods are just,
and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us;

but he takes our sins on himself, and while he drives them out of us
with a whip of scorpions he will yet make them work his ends. He
defeats our sins, makes them prisoners, forces them into the service
of good, chains them like galley-slaves to the rowing-benches of the
gospel-ship, or sets them like ugly gurgoyles or corbels or brackets
in the walls of his temples.--No, that last figure I retract. I
don't like it. It implies their continuance."

"Poor woman!" said Mr. Drew again, who for once had been inattentive
to the curate. "Well! she is sorely punished too."

"She will be worse punished yet," said the curate, "if I can read
the signs of character. SHE is not repentant yet--though I did spy