Marian started; his words brought her back so suddenly to a forgotten present.
“Yes—” and she sighed—“I was seeing her dear little face just then as clear as daylight, just like what she was when I gave her away.”
“You’ve never told me yet who you gave her to.”
“No,” Marian answered.
“And you’d rather not? You can’t trust me? Sometimes I do think a second ought to know it beside yourself. Suppose you should be ill—too ill to speak—and should want your child sent for?”
“I’ve thought of that. But I don’t see my way to telling yet. Yes, I trust you—more than anybody else in the world. It’s myself I can’t trust. Just now I’m feeling stronger and not so troubled; but how can I tell that it’ll last? And if your persuadings should pull the same way as my own heart, I think it would be too much for me.”
“And you don’t think it would be right to try to get your child back?”
“No, I don’t—I can’t; I wish I could. She’s in a happy home, and doesn’t want me. And they that have kept her all these years have the right to her now. It wasn’t as if I’d given them any choice. I threw my child into their arms, so to speak, and took myself off, and they couldn’t give her back to me, if they wished. Yes, it was a mad thing to do—mad and foolish and wrong. Anybody else would have sent her off to the workhouse—anybody but one who is all kindness; and it was his kindness that I trusted. But I sometimes wish now that my trust had proved false; for if my child were poor and unhappy she’d be glad to welcome me—glad to see her own mother. She wouldn’t be glad now. And yet if he had cast her off, she might have been brought up in wicked ways. Sometimes I don’t know what to wish—what to think. I feel it was the maddest deed a mother ever ventured on, almost—a mother who loved her little one, as I loved Joan. Worry must have driven me pretty nearly out of my mind, before I could have done it.”
Jervis said “Yes” to this. “But you’ve looked happier of late,” he added kindly.
“I’m getting more used to waiting. It was dreadfully hard at first—hard to know I’d put my child away from me with my own hand, and mightn’t try to take her back. It’s been easier lately, or else I’ve grown stronger. There’s help for those who pray and trust; and if God lets us bear the punishment brought by our own doings, he’s willing to forgive. Yes; I think I must be stronger.”