With averted head she stood apart, a pitiable picture of misery, that could find no adequate expression.
"My baby, my love, my precious daughter!"
Ah the pleading pathos of that marvellous voice which had swayed at will the emotions of vast audiences, as soft fitful zephyrs stir and bow the tender grasses in quiet meadows! Slowly the girl turned around, and reluctantly looked at the beloved beautiful face, tearful yet smiling, beaming with such passionate tenderness upon her.
Mrs. Orme opened her arms, and Regina sprang forward, sinking on her knees at her mother's feet, clinging to her dress.
"You could not smile upon me so, with that sin soiling your soul! Oh, mother, say you did it not!"
"God had mercy, and saved me from it."
"Let us praise and serve Him for ever, in thanksgiving," sobbed the daughter.
"I see now that my punishment would have been unendurable, for I should have lost the one true, pure heart that clings to me. How do mothers face their retribution, I wonder, when they disgrace their innocent little ones, and see shame and horror and aversion in the soft faces that slept upon their bosoms, and once looked in adoration at the heaven of their eyes? Even in this life the pangs of the lost must seize all such.
"I did not marry General Laurance, though I entertained the purpose of a merely nominal union, and he acceded to my conditions, signing a marriage contract to adopt you, give you his name, settled upon you all his remaining fortune, except the real estate which I knew he had transferred to his son. I think my intense hate and thirst for vengeance temporarily maddened me; for certainly had I been quite sane I should never have forced myself to hang upon the verge of such an odious gulf. I was tempted by the prospect of making you the real heiress of the Laurance name and wealth, and of beggaring Cuthbert, his so-called wife and crippled child, by displaying the mortgage I held; and which will yet sweep them to penury, for the banker has failed, and Abbie Ames is penniless as Minnie Merle once was.
"While I floated down the dark stream to ruin, a blessed interposing hand arrested me. Mr. Palma wrote that at last a glorious day of hope dawned on my weary, starless night. Gerbert Audré was alive and anxious to testify to the validity of my marriage, and the perfect sanity and sobriety of Cuthbert when it was solemnized (his father was prepared to plead that he was insane from intoxication when he was inveigled into the ceremony); and oh, better, best of all, my persecutor had relented! Peleg swore that his assertions regarding my character were untrue, were prompted by malice, stimulated by Laurance gold. Having been arrested by Mr. Palma and carried before a magistrate, he had written and signed a noble vindication of me. To you he avows I owe his tardy recantation and complete justification of my past; and you will find among those papers his letter to me upon this subject.