She never overlooked or forgot me, but studied my comfort on every occasion. I could have told her that I was watching what was to me a perfect problem—the kindly, gentle, pitying deeds of a woman, who had, I believed, murdered her own child.
"I am not tired, Mrs. Fleming, I am interested," I said.
The little cottage which stood in the midst of a wild patch of garden was inhabited by a day-laborer. He was away at work; his wife sat at home nursing a little babe, a small, fair, tiny child, evidently not more than three weeks old, dying, too, if one could judge from the face.
She bent over it—the beautiful, graceful woman who was Lance's wife. Ah, Heaven! the change that came over her, the passion of mother love that came into her face; she was transformed.
"Let me hold the little one for you," she said, "while you rest for a few minutes;" and the poor, young mother gratefully accepted the offer.
What a picture she made in the gloomy room of the little cottage, her beautiful face and shining hair, her dress sweeping the ground, and the tiny child lying in her arms.
"Does it suffer much?" she asked, in her sweet, compassionate voice.
"It did, ma'am," replied the mother, "but I have given it something to keep it quiet."
"Do you mean to say that you have drugged it?" asked Mrs. Fleming.
"Only a little cordial, ma'am, nothing more; it keeps it sleeping; and when it sleeps it does not suffer."