“It has not driven you mad before,” he said, with a laugh.
“No, I tried to forget; he made me forget. Oh, don’t you understand that a woman may be righteous even in her sin; that she may cling to a man sinfully sometimes, just because she has promised? It is too late in the day now for us to blame each other, or for me to attempt to justify myself. Only believe that I have left all that old unhappiness behind. John, you will let me see her?”
“How did you find out where I was?” asked the man, after a pause.
“I went to the old home and found that you had left. I made fruitless inquiries for a long time, and at last, quite by accident, happened upon some one who had seen you in this town. I came here yesterday and got a quiet lodging, and set about to look for you. Indeed”—as the man made an impatient gesture—“indeed, I have not come to trouble you again; I will go away, and you shall not see me any more.”
The man appeared to be thinking deeply. After a long pause, during which she looked at him appealingly, with her hands tightly clasped, he spoke, going first to the door, and assuring himself that it was shut.
“When I left the home you dishonoured and abandoned,” he began, “I dismissed the servants and brought the child with me, and came here secretly. I had some pride, more perhaps than you imagined, and I did not want the stupid story bandied about on every one’s lips. I determined to set aside that mistake and begin over again. So I chose this old house, in a town where no one knew me; I got a woman to come in, day by day, to do what little work there was to be done, and to look after the child. It’s a dreary place,” he said, looking round the darkened room with a sigh, “but the child has to suffer, I suppose, for the sins of the mother; that’s an inevitable law. It’s an inevitable law also that punishment follows sin—not in the next world only, if there be one, but here. I should be wanting in something, failing to carry out what I have so often preached and written, if I did not recognise that punishment must follow your sin, and that you—poor frail mortal that you are—have inevitably and unconsciously rushed upon your own punishment. It shall be a fine and a bitter one, I promise you. Listen to me.”
She looked up at him tremblingly, striving to read in his inscrutable face the meaning of his words.
“You shall not only see the child for an hour; you shall live here, in the same house with it, as long as you like.” Then, as she would have cried out, he put up one hand to stop her, and laughed, and went on mercilessly: “But on one condition. I have told you that no one here knows anything of my story; they believe, I think, that the mother of the child is dead. Let them still think so. The condition I impose is that you shall remain in this house, under the name by which I first knew you; that you shall occupy the position of housekeeper; that you shall see the child, and attend to her wants in every way, and at any time you like. I have discovered to-night that she has been somewhat neglected by the person I paid to look after her; you will have a deeper interest in her than that, and may be trusted, I think, to look after her well.” He laughed again, then suddenly stepped across to her and took her fiercely by the arms and looked into her eyes. “But understand this: She is to know nothing of the relationship that exists between you; she will know you only as a paid dependent. The instant that, from any endearment you give her, or any word you let slip, she learns that you are her mother, you leave this place, and see her no more! Do you understand that?”
She shrank away from him and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, I can not, I can not!” she cried.
He pointed to the door. “Go as you came; you have no right here; I have been a fool to permit you to stay even so long as this. Go at once, or I will have you turned from the doors!”