She shook her head.
"Madam, I find I must revise my ideals of maternal devotion. You punish your innocent child for the sins of those who blighted your youth? You harangue a rabble in favor of 'justice' and deny it to a dying boy."
She caught her breath, leaned against the wall, and covered her face with her hands. When he saw it again the color had ebbed, the lovely eyes were darkened by unshed tears, and the lips were beyond her control.
"My baby—my fatherless little one! Ever since he was born I have struggled so hard to keep his mother's name clean—his mother's name, all he had—clean and beyond reproach! Do you suppose that now, at the last, I would put myself under obligation to a rich man? We may die paupers, he and I, but when we go to the Potter's Field—the only undisputed land labor can claim—we go free, honest, and unblemished, and if there was a God, I could hold up my baby and demand why He had cursed us both in our innocence."
"I am sorry that the circumstances coloring your life have destroyed every vestige of confidence in man's honor, yet I have no alternative but to accept your decision, and I wish you good morning."
He lifted his hat, and had gone half way down the stairs, when she followed and touched his sleeve.
"I did not thank you for much goodness to my child, but I do want to say I am not ungrateful; only I have had so little to be thankful for, I don't quite know how to phrase gratitude. The world has been so hard to me I am suspicious of every rich man in your social circle. You see, my face has handicapped me always——"
She set her teeth and struck one palm resentfully against her cheek, and the passionate, pent-up cry of years of suffering broke through the next words.
"Yes, my face has been my curse, and it was the steel trap that snapped chains on me when I was only a child. Kindness to my Leighton is the one thing that touches what is left of my heart; and how do you suppose I can bear now to listen to his sobbing yonder, because he thinks I have rudely driven you away? Oh, my pretty baby! My own beautiful little one! Cast out, with only his girl-mother to fight for him against this cruel world! And now if I lose him, if my all is taken away from me——"
She wrung her hands, and the blanched face was upturned as if challenging her God.