"I forgive you freely," he wrote; "but, ah, Kitty, you might have feigned a love you did not feel, if only to spare me the degradation of dying a pauper, alone and without friends!"
The woman's face grew dark as she read these pitiful words, and, crushing up the letter in her hands, she threw it into the waste-paper basket with a cynical sneer.
"Bah!" she muttered contemptuously, "does he think to impose on me with such tricks? Feign a love! Yes, kiss and caress him to gratify his vanity. Did I not give him fair warning of the end? And now he whimpers about mercy--mercy from me to him--pshaw! let him die and go to his pauper grave, I'll not shed a tear!"
And she laughed harshly.
At this moment Meg, who had been building two edifices of bricks, began to talk to herself.
"This," said Meg, putting the top brick on one building, "is the House of Good, but the other is the House of Sin. Mumsey," raising her eyes, "which house would you like to live in?"
"In the House of Good, dear," said Kitty in a tremulous voice, touched by the artless question of the child. "Come to mumsey, darling, and tell her what you have been doing."
Meg, nothing loath, accepted this invitation, and, climbing up on her mother's knee, threw her arms round Kitty's neck.
"I had some bread and milk," she said confidentially; "then I went and saw my Guinea pigs. Dotty--you know, mumsey, the one with the long hair--oh, he squeaked--he did squeak! I think he was hungry."
"Have you been a good little girl?"