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Rh 'It is well. Now go.'

He stood in an intent unchanged attitude till Delly returned.

'How is my wife, now?'

Again startled by the peculiar emphasis placed on the magical word wife, Delly, who had long before this, been occasionally struck with the infrequency of his using that term; she looked at him perplexedly, and said half unconsciously:

'Your wife, sir?'

'Ay, is she not?'

'God grant that she be—Oh, 'tis most cruel to ask that of poor, poor Delly, sir!'

'Tut for thy tears! Never deny it again, then!—I swear to heaven, she is!'

With these wild words, Pierre seized his hat, and departed the room, muttering something about bringing the key of the additional chamber.

As the door closed on him, Delly dropped on her knees. She lifted her head toward the ceiling, but dropped it again, as if tyrannically awed downward, and bent it low over, till her whole form tremulously cringed to the floor.

'God that made me, and that wast not so hard to me as wicked Delly deserved,—God that made me, I pray to Thee! ward it off from me, if it be coming to me. Be not deaf to me; these stony walls—Thou canst hear through them. Pity! pity!—mercy, my God!—If they are not married; if I, penitentially seeking to be pure, am now but the servant to a greater sin, than I myself committed: then, pity! pity! pity! pity! pity! Oh God that made me,—See me, see me here—what can Delly do? If I go hence, none will take me in but villains. If I stay, then—for stay I must—and they be not married,—then pity, pity, pity, pity, pity!'