Then she lifted her astonished eyes to the woman, to find her regarding her with a look of mingled curiosity, hatred, and triumph.
"The boy is—his child?" Edith murmured at last, in an inquiring tone.
A slow smile crept over the mother's face as she stood for a moment looking at Edith—a smile of malice which betrayed that she gloried in seeing that the girl at last understood her purpose in bringing the little one there.
"Yes, you see—you understand," she said, at last; "any one would know that Correlli is his father."
"And you—" Edith breathed, in a scarcely audible voice, while she began to tremble with a secret hope.
"I am the child's mother—yes," the girl returned, with a look of despair in her dusky orbs.
But she was not prepared for the light of eager joy that leaped into Edith's eyes at this confession—the new life and hope that swept over her face and animated her manner until she seemed almost transformed, from the weary, spiritless appearing girl she had seemed on her entrance, into a new creature.
"Then, of course, you are Emil Correlli's wife," she cried, in a glad tone; "you have come to tell me this—to tell me that I am free from the hateful tie which I supposed bound me to him? Oh, I thank you! I thank you!"
"You thank me?"
"Yes, a thousand times."