“Abandon her, do you mean?” questioned the physician, sternly.
The lady shrugged her shapely shoulders and made an impatient gesture, as if the subject and object were alike distasteful to her.
“If you choose to put it in that disagreeable way, I suppose I shall have to accept the term,” she replied, coldly. “But you have not answered my question. Do you know of a home for orphans where she would be received and where I might safely leave her? I would make it an object for any such institution to take her.”
CHAPTER II.
A MONSTROUS PROPOSITION.
Dr. Turner did not immediately reply.
He was so indignant, so overcome by the startling and unnatural proposition that he was rendered speechless.
The knowledge that this woman, so beautiful and gifted, and who had, to all appearance, unlimited wealth at her command, should desire to cast her offspring adrift upon the world, coldly throwing her upon the indifferent care of strangers, was simply horrible to him.
The mystery, which, from the first, he had instinctively recognized as attaching itself to this woman, was thickening about her.
There must, he thought, be some terrible secret connected with her life, which she was anxious and bound to conceal, or she never could have contemplated such an unfeeling act, and he could think of but one contingency that would compel her to adopt such extreme measures.
“Madame,” he at last said, and speaking with dignified reserve, “I cannot refrain from expressing my surprise at your startling and—I am compelled to say it—heartless proposal. It would be a most unnatural—a most reprehensible proceeding. My whole nature recoils at the mere mention of it, and I can think of but one reason that would seem to make it necessary for you to abandon your child in the way you propose.”