“About your child?—yes.”
“Thank you, dearest mother. If so lost a wretch as I am dare invoke Heaven, I would ask its blessings on you.”
“Ask no blessing for me!” she fiercely broke in. “I would hurl it back in the face of the angels, did they offer it.”
Folding her mantle around her, she knotted the handkerchief, that had fallen off, under her chin, and stood ready to depart. The young man went to the door, and knocked loudly. A moment after, the tramp of heavy feet was heard in the corridor approaching the door.
“It is the jailer to let you out. Once more, good-by, mother.”
She was hard, and stern, and rigid now; and there were no tears in her dry, stony, burning eyes, as she turned to take a last farewell of the son she idolized—the son she might never see again. His eyes were dim, but her tears were turned to sparks of fire.
Without a word she pressed one hot, burning kiss on his handsome brow; and then the door opened, and she flitted out in the darkness like an evil shadow. The heavy door again swung to; the key turned in the lock; the son was alone in his condemned cell; and the maniac mother, out once more in the beating rain and chill night wind, was lost in the great wilderness of mighty London.