Her heart throbbed wildly as she turned to meet him, then suddenly stopped, seeming a dead weight in her breast, as her eyes met his.
For a moment neither spoke; once her lips moved, but no sound came from them. Before that face, hard and impassive as granite, and as cold, the impulse which she had felt to throw herself at his feet and plead for mercy and for love died within her; her tongue seemed paralyzed, powerless to utter a word, and the words she would have spoken fled from her brain.
With swift observation he noted the terrible change which the last weeks, and especially the last few hours, had wrought in the wretched woman before him, and the suffering, evidenced by her deathly pallor, her trembling agitation, and the look of dumb, almost hopeless pleading in her eyes, appealed to him far more than any words could have done.
He was the first to speak, and though there was no softening of the stern features, yet his tones were gentle, almost pitying, as he said,—
"I have come as you requested. Why did you send for me? What have you to say?"
At the sound of his voice she seemed somewhat reassured, and advancing a few steps towards him, she repeated his words,—
"Why did I send for you? Why should I not send for you? Think you a mother would have no desire to see her own son after long years of cruel separation from him?"
"There is no need to call up the past," he said, more coldly; "the separation to which you refer was, under existing circumstances, the best for all concerned. It undoubtedly caused suffering, but you were not the sufferer; there could be no great depth of maternal love where there was neither love nor loyalty as a wife."
Her dark eyes grew tender and luminous as she fixed them upon his face, while she beckoned him to a seat and seated herself near and facing him.
"You forget," she replied, in the low, rich tones he had so often heard at Fair Oaks; "you forget that a mother's love is instinctive, born within her with the birth of her child, while a wife's love must be won. I must recall the past to you, and you must listen; 'twas for this I sent for you, that you, knowing the past, might know that, however deeply I may have sinned, I have been far more deeply sinned against."