"Of the child? No; all I ever knew was what you yourself read in the paper—that both mother and child had disappeared from their home and both were supposed to have suffered the same fate, although the body of the child was not found."
"Oh!" groaned Gerald Goddard, wiping the clammy moisture from his brow. "I never realized the horror of it as I do at this moment, and I never have forgiven myself for not going to Rome to institute a search for myself; but—"
"But I wouldn't let you, I suppose you were about to add," said madam, bitterly. "What was the use?" she went on, angrily. "Everything was all over before you knew anything about it—"
"I could at least have erected a tablet to mark her resting-place," the man interposed.
"Ha! ha! it strikes me it was rather late then to manifest much sentiment; that would have become you better before you broke her heart and killed her by your neglect and desertion," sneered madam, who was driven to the verge of despair by this late exhibition of regard for a woman whom she had hated.
"Don't, Anna!" he cried, sharply. Then suddenly straightening himself, he said, as if just awaking from some horrible nightmare: "But she did not die. I have not that on my conscience, after all."
"She did—I tell you she did!" hoarsely retorted the excited woman.
"But I have seen and talked with her to-night, and she told me that she was—Isabel!" he persisted.
Anna Goddard struck her palms together with a gesture bordering upon despair.
"I do not believe it—I will not believe it!" she panted.