Twice she started up to listen, but only to sink back again, very calm and patient, her full faith that the man she loved would return beaming from every feature of her handsome young face.
“Mother,” she said at last softly; and Mrs Riversley turned towards her.
“What do you want?”
“Is it not time you brought it back to me, mother—that you laid it by my side?”
There was no reply, and the girl looked up pleadingly.
“I should like him to see it when he comes,” she said softly, and a wondrous look of love dawned in her pale face, causing a strange pang in her mother’s breast as she stood watching her and evidently trying to nerve herself for the disclosure she was about to make, one which in her anger she had thought easy, but which now became terribly difficult.
“If you cannot forgive me, mother dear,” said the girl pleadingly, “let me have my babe: for I love it, I love it,” she whispered to herself, and the soft dawn of a young mother’s yearning for her offspring grew warmer in her face.
“You will never see it more,” exclaimed the woman at last, in a hard harsh voice, though she trembled and shrank from her daughter’s eyes as she spoke. “It will never lie by your side for him to gaze upon your shame and his: the child is dead.”
A piteous cry broke from the young mother’s breast, and in her bitter grief she lay sobbing violently, till nature interposed, and, exhausted, weak and helpless, she sank into a heavy sleep with the tears still wet upon her face.
“It is better so—it is better so,” muttered Mrs Riversley, as she stood gazing down at her child. “It will nearly kill her, but, God forgive me, it must be done.”