“Mother, are you free from all blame in this? Know you nothing of her fate?”
“Nothing—as there is a God in heaven, I know nothing.”
“Oh, mother! mother! there is still blood upon your skirts. I have heard your talk. It may be she has escaped a worse death by her present fate!”
“What mean you, my son?”
She was pale and trembling; she knew well the meaning of his words.
“You know what I mean. A curse upon a people who forget the ties of blood, and the claims of humanity, to gratify an idle spleen, and call it religion!”
“These are strong words to me, John.”
“What have you said? what vile calumnies have you set afloat, mother? You would have taken that innocent child—that pure, harmless baby—that little incarnated spirit of helpless girlhood—and have given her over to the brutes in human shape, to torture, and drown, and burn, and hang, as they are now doing in Europe. This you would have done.”
The woman crouched down on the rock before her own child, condemned, humiliated. He had revealed her to herself, and she trembled before him.