"And will Louey be taken with you?"
"Certainly he will go with me. To strive to bring him up so that he may be a happier man than his father is all that there is now left for me in life." Mrs. Trevelyan had now got the boy in her arms, and her mother was seated by her on the sofa. Trevelyan was standing away from them, but so near the door that no sudden motion on their part would enable them to escape with the boy without his interposition. It now again occurred to the mother to carry off her prize in opposition to her husband;—but she had no scheme to that effect laid with her mother, and she could not reconcile herself to the idea of a contest with him in which personal violence would be necessary. The woman of the house had, indeed, seemed to sympathise with her, but she could not dare in such a matter to trust to assistance from a stranger. "I do not wish to be uncourteous," said Trevelyan, "but if you have no assurance to give me, you had better—leave me."
Then there came to be a bargaining about time, and the poor woman begged almost on her knees that she might be allowed to take her child up-stairs and be with him alone for a few minutes. It seemed to her that she had not seen her boy till she had had him to herself, in absolute privacy, till she had kissed his limbs, and had her hand upon his smooth back, and seen that he was white and clean and bright as he had ever been. And the bargain was made. She was asked to pledge her word that she would not take him out of the house,—and she pledged her word, feeling that there was no strength in her for that action which she had meditated. He, knowing that he might still guard the passage at the bottom of the stairs, allowed her to go with the boy to his bedroom, while he remained below with Lady Rowley. A quarter of an hour was allowed to her, and she humbly promised that she would return when that time was expired.
Trevelyan held the door open for her as she went, and kept it open during her absence. There was hardly a word said between him and Lady Rowley, but he paced from the passage into the room and from the room into the passage with his hands behind his back. "It is cruel," he said once. "It is very cruel."
"It is you that are cruel," said Lady Rowley.
"Of course;—of course. That is natural from you. I expect that from you." To this she made no answer, and he did not open his lips again.
After a while Mrs. Trevelyan called to her mother, and Lady Rowley was allowed to go up-stairs. The quarter of an hour was of course greatly stretched, and all the time Trevelyan continued to pace in and out of the room. He was patient, for he did not summon them; but went on pacing backwards and forwards, looking now and again to see that the cab was at its place,—that no deceit was being attempted, no second act of kidnapping being perpetrated. At last the two ladies came down the stairs, and the boy was with them,—and the woman of the house.
"Louis," said the wife, going quickly up to her husband, "I will do anything, if you will give me my child."
"What will you do?"
"Anything;—say what you want. He is all the world to me, and I cannot live if he be taken from me."