"But what? Tell me."
Then came the trouble with a burst of tears: "I want mamma to tuck me up and hear my prayers. We say them—mamma and I—when the stars come in the sky; and the stars are up there now, and—and I want mamma."
For Laura was only a very little girl, and this want made her first realize what it was to be without her mother.
Her companion did not answer, and the child went on in her simplicity: "God is up there above the stars a very long way away, but I know He hears, for when mamma was in London and Jane was cross, I told Him and He brought her back after a long time. Oh, please, will it be a great many nights before we go back to mamma?"
As she spoke those silent tears so pitiful from a little child began to flow, and her companion once more felt inclined to curse himself for his short-sighted folly. He knelt down beside her in the carriage, and she saw that his face was very pale and that real tears were in his eyes.
"Ma fillette, ma chèrie," he whispered, for in his emotion the English endearments sounded hard and cold, "be patient—trust me."
For a few moments Laura was soothed, but still, as there came the gleam of the stars through the darkness, the childish wail was repeated: "I want mamma! I want mamma!"
L'Estrange was perplexed. Passionate sorrow he had expected, and he had not despaired of curing it by distractions, but this quiet pathos of grief cut him to the very soul. In its presence he was helpless. How could he comfort her?
He pondered, but for a long time in vain. At last his own childish days returned to his mind, and the stories he had learnt at his nurse's knee. "It was in parables," thought this master of human nature, "that the Great Teacher taught the world; and what were the myths of antiquity but parables to prepare the nations in their childhood for the reception of truth? By a parable I may perhaps make this little one believe that her present suffering is for a future good."
By which it will be seen that he still thought, in some vague way, of redressing the great wrong he had committed, and by means of the child, whom he had stolen in an access of bitter revenge, restoring Margaret to happiness by giving her back her husband.