"Darling, you will forget my cruelty and come back to me—you and the little one?"
Then she lifted her head and looked at him with a happy, little laugh and a very bright blush.
"Lawrence, kiss our little boy," she said, putting the little bundle in his arms. "Is he not a pretty babe? I call him Robbie, for my uncle, who has been so good and kind in all my trouble."
"While I have been so cruel and unkind," he said, remorsefully.
"But that is all past now," she said, hopefully. "Oh, Lawrence, I thought you would never return to me again! What caused you to forgive me?"
"That villain—whom I cannot curse now because he was hung this morning—confessed all to me last night. My darling! you were cruelly wronged, and I was mad and blind to believe all the lies he told me at first."
"The best he could tell you was bad enough," she said, remorsefully. "It was wicked, it was terrible of me to have encouraged that clandestine acquaintance and secret love, deserting my home and loved ones for a stranger of whom I knew nothing, except that he was handsome, and that his romantic wooing took my foolish heart by storm.
"Oh, the bitter consequences that have followed that act of girlish folly!
"My own deep disgrace, my father's death from a broken heart, poor Sydney's dreadful murder, mamma and Georgina's everlasting alienation from me?"
She clasped her hands, and tears stood bright as dew-drops in her soft, blue eyes.