"Mother!" she said, clasping her arms round the poor woman's breast, "if you have sinned, you have also suffered. The one false step you made has brought its own punishment; but why did you not tell me all this before, and so have saved yourself this bitter agony?"
"Tell you before?" said her mother, sadly. "Child! child! what good would such a confession have done? You could not have helped me."
"No, dearest; but I could have loved you. I could have made your life less hard. Oh, mother! poor mother, how you must have suffered when I treated you as a stranger."
"I did suffer," replied Mrs. Belswin, in a low tone, "but not so much as you think, for even then you treated me more like a mother than as a companion."
"And I was the little child of whom you spoke?"
"Yes, dear."
"Oh, blind! blind! how could I have been so blind as not to guess your secret. You betrayed yourself in a hundred ways, my poor mother, but I never saw it. But now--now that I know the truth, I see how blind I have been."
"Ah, Kaituna, if I had only known you would have received me like this, but I feared to tell you of my shame lest you should turn from me in scorn."
"Hush! dear mother, hush!"
"And it was terrible to think that the little child I had borne at my breast should spurn me."