“You are very polite!” cried Hadria. “Why should I not lay up store for myself in heaven, as well as Mrs. Walker and the rest?”
“You were not thinking of heaven when you did this deed, Hadria.”
“No; I was thinking of the other place.”
“And do you hope to get any satisfaction out of your protégée?”
Hadria shrugged her shoulders.
“I don’t know. The child is the result of great sorrow and suffering; it is the price of a woman’s life; a woman who offended the world, having lived for nearly forty weary obedient years, in circumstances dreary enough to have turned twenty saints into as many sinners. No; I am no Lady Bountiful. I feel in defending this child—a sorry defence I know—that I am, in so far, opposing the world and the system of things that I hate——. Ah! how I hate it!”
“Is it then hatred that prompts the deed?”
Hadria looked thoughtfully towards the church tower, in whose shadow the mother of the babe lay sleeping.
“Can you ever quite unravel your own motives, Valeria? Hatred? Yes; there is a large ingredient of hatred. Without it, probably this poor infant would have been left to struggle through life alone, with a mill-stone round its neck, and a miserable constitution into the bargain. I hope to rescue its constitution. But that poor woman’s story touched me closely. It is so hard, so outrageous! The emptiness of her existence; the lack of outlet for her affections; the endless monotony; and then the sudden new interest and food for the starved emotions; the hero-worship that is latent in us all; and then—good heavens!—for a touch of poetry, of romance in her life, she would have been ready to believe in the professions of the devil himself—and this man was a very good understudy for the devil! Ah! If ever I should meet him!”
“What would you do?” Valeria asked curiously.