He stretched out his hand mechanically, took the light, and opened the door of the adjoining chamber. The beds that stood there were empty.
With a threatening look he turned upon her.
"Shall I search the house room by room?" he asked, his voice trembling with anger.
"It would be useless trouble. I swear to you, I did not bring the child with me."
"Trickster!" he cried, setting the light down on the table with such force that the flame was almost extinguished. "Only this once the truth--only this once! Where is the child? What have you done with her? In whose hands--"
"In the best of hands," she interrupted, "under the very safest protection, so help me God! I--it is true--I had an irresistible longing to see my poor child once more, whom you have made motherless and to whom you wish to give a mother who can have no heart for the orphan. If it is a crime for the real mother not to wish to see her child given to the false one, then I have committed such a crime. I wanted to steal it for myself, to be a thief of that which is my own, purchased with pain and lost with pain; but it happened differently--I was not to have it, in punishment for not having defended my rights more boldly. Oh! and this cruel, pitiless man, who has robbed me of everything, even of this last short, desperate consolation--"
Her voice appeared to fail her. She covered her face with her white hands, and was silent. But the time when she might have deceived him was past.
"Where is the child?" he asked, after a short pause, stepping close up to her.
She did not remove her hands from before her eyes.
"I sent it back to you. I saw that the innocent creature had been brought up in hatred toward her mother, and that I could not hope to win her young heart back to me again. What I felt--but enough! What do you care for my sorrows? I pressed the child to my breast for the last time, and then let her go from me forever. When you get home, you will find her there. This is the truth. And if I had to die this moment I could not say anything else."