We both looked round and saw the Minister standing in the open doorway, with the child in his arms. The ordeal that he had gone through in the condemned cell was visible in his face; he looked miserably haggard and broken. I was eager to know if his merciful interest in the Prisoner had purified her guilty soul—but at the same time I was afraid, after what he had but too plainly suffered, to ask him to enter into details.
“Only one word,” I said. “Are your anxieties at rest?”
“God’s mercy has helped me,” he answered. “I have not spoken in vain. She believes; she repents; she has confessed the crime.”
After handing the written and signed confession to me, he approached the venomous creature, still lingering in the room to hear what passed between us. Before I could stop him, he spoke to her, under a natural impression that he was addressing the Prisoner’s servant.
“I am afraid you will be disappointed,” he said, “when I tell you that your services will no longer be required. I have reasons for placing the child under the care of a nurse of my own choosing.”
She listened with an evil smile.
“I know who furnished you with your reasons,” she answered. “Apologies are quite needless, so far as I am concerned. If you had proposed to me to look after the new member of your family there, I should have felt it my duty to myself to have refused. I am not a nurse—I am an independent single lady. I see by your dress that you are a clergyman. Allow me to present myself as a mark of respect to your cloth. I am Miss Elizabeth Chance. May I ask the favor of your name?”
Too weary and too preoccupied to notice the insolence of her manner, the Minister mentioned his name. “I am anxious,” he said, “to know if the child has been baptized. Perhaps you can enlighten me?”
Still insolent, Miss Elizabeth Chance shook her head carelessly. “I never heard—and, to tell you the truth, I never cared to hear—whether she was christened or not. Call her by what name you like, I can tell you this—you will find your adopted daughter a heavy handful.”
The Minister turned to me. “What does she mean?”