“No—no—no!” was the hasty reply, as if she dreaded his influence. “I want my child: give me my child, and let me go.”
“But, Ellen, this is madness and folly,” he whispered. “You know it is not here. He told you that it was dead, did he?”
“Yes,” she cried, angrily; “but it was not true. You told him to say so. Where is she now?”
“Look here!” said Richard, writing an address upon a card—that of one of the boarding—houses in the neighbourhood. “Take this and go and wait there till I come, and we will go and see about it. But, for my sake, do not make a disturbance here—it would be ruin to me.”
The poor creature, half reft of her senses, gazed earnestly in his face for a few moments, while the angry light faded from her eye. In her tigress-like rage for her lost little one, if met by anger she was ready to dare, urged by her maternal instinct; but these gentle words disarmed her resentment, and falling on her knees at Richard Pellet’s feet, she burst into tears, sobbing as she begged of him to let her have her child.
“Yes, yes! you shall; only get up,” said Richard. “It shall all be made right, only go now.”
“Then you will give her to me?” she said, imploringly. “I will not say a word to any one about being your wife if you will give me my child. I know now why you shut me up there with Mrs Walls. I have thought it out: it was that you might marry some one rich; for I, when my head went, was not fit to be your wife. But I could not help it.”
“Well, well; go now,” cried Richard, impatiently; “and we will talk about that afterwards.”
She rose to her feet slowly, clasping his hand in both her own, and gazing earnestly in his face, as if trying to read his thoughts; and they must have been plain to read, for, as if she saw in his face cruelty, treachery, and a repetition of her long sufferings, she dashed the hand away, and stood defying him once more, the former rage flashing in her eyes as she repeated her demand—“Give me my child!”
“Go and wait for me there, then,” said Richard, sullenly.