“Please, let me in,” said Mrs. Mervyn. “Baby fell off the sofa and is hurt. I have brought him.”
Her child! For an instant the room whirled; then an agony of grief welled up within me. The poor, innocent child!—our child!
Senselessly, I staggered to the door, opened it, and took the babe from Mrs. Mervyn. He was not much hurt—a wound on the head of but slight importance.
Turning to reassure Mrs. Mervyn, I saw her gazing at the pistols as if she were petrified.
“You meant this?” she said to me, her face aflame like the face of the accusing Angel. “What a love God must have had for you, for you to have been saved!”
Walking to me, she took baby’s hand and laid it on mine.
“He has saved you,” she said. “Oh, never, never forget it!”
CHAPTER IX.
THE BEGINNING OF THE SEQUEL.
At first Hugh felt and seemed crushed. He had thought of many difficulties and troubles that might await him in his married life, but the one thing which had not entered into his calculations—Lilia’s death—was the unexpected occurrence which happened.
He had sometimes felt, from the first beginning of their married life, that something was hanging over him—some fatality. The whole story of his acquaintance with the Pyms was so strange, that the memory of it oppressed him. Perhaps this accounted for the feeling of discomfort which was now and then almost a dread of the future.