The contrast between the cruelty of her intention, and the musical beauty of the voice which politely expressed it in those words, really startled me. I was at a loss how to answer her, at the very time when I ought to have been most ready to speak.
“You must surely understand,” she went on, “that we don’t want another person’s child, now we have a little darling of our own?”
“Does your husband agree with you in that view?” I asked.
“Oh dear, no! He said what you said just now, and (oddly enough) almost in the same words. But I don’t at all despair of persuading him to change his mind—and you can help me.”
She made that audacious assertion with such an appearance of feeling perfectly sure of me, that my politeness gave way under the strain laid on it. “What do you mean?” I asked sharply.
Not in the least impressed by my change of manner, she took from the pocket of her dress a printed paper. “You will find what I mean there,” she replied—and put the paper into my hand.
It was an appeal to the charitable public, occasioned by the enlargement of an orphan-asylum, with which I had been connected for many years. What she meant was plain enough now. I said nothing: I only looked at her.
Pleased to find that I was clever enough to guess what she meant, on this occasion, the Minister’s wife informed me that the circumstances were all in our favor. She still persisted in taking me into partnership—the circumstances were in our favor.
“In two years more,” she explained, “the child of that detestable creature who was hanged—do you know, I cannot even look at the little wretch without thinking of the gallows?—will be old enough (with your interest to help us) to be received into the asylum. What a relief it will be to get rid of that child! And how hard I shall work at canvassing for subscribers’ votes! Your name will be a tower of strength when I use it as a reference. Pardon me—you are not looking so pleasantly as usual. Do you see some obstacles in our way?”
“I see two obstacles.”