'Now then is the time,' thought the doctor. 'Go nearer her, my child,' said he in a low voice to Adeline, 'embrace her knees.'
Adeline rose, and approached Mrs Mowbray; she seized her hand, she pressed it to her lips. Mrs Mowbray's bosom heaved violently: she almost returned the pressure of Adeline's hand.
'Victory, victory!' muttered the doctor to himself, cutting a caper behind Mrs Mowbray's chair.
Mrs Mowbray took the handkerchief from her face.
'My mother, my dear mother! look on me, look on me with kindness only one moment, and only say that you do not hate me!'
Mrs Mowbray turned round and fixed her eyes on Adeline with a look of kindness, and Adeline's began to sparkle with delight; when, as she threw back her cloak, which, hanging over her arm, embarrassed her as she knelt to embrace her mother's knees, Mrs Mowbray's eyes glanced from her face to her shape.
In an instant the fierceness of her look returned: 'Shame to thy race, disgrace to thy family!' she exclaimed, spurning her kneeling child from her: 'and canst thou, while conscious of carrying in thy bosom the proof of thy infamy, dare to solicit and expect my pardon?—Hence! ere I load thee with maledictions.'
Adeline wrapped her cloak round her, and sunk terrified and desponding to the ground.
'Why, what a ridiculous caprice is this!' cried the doctor. 'Is it a greater crime to be in a family way, than to live with a man as his mistress?—You knew your daughter had done the last: therefore it is nonsense to be so affected at the former.—Come, come, forget and forgive!'
'Never: and if you do not leave the house with her this moment, I will not stay in it. My injuries are so great that they cannot admit forgiveness.'