would bo too cruel. In all this world I
have, as I have told you, nothing but this,"
hugging the child as she spoke, closer to
that breast whose superb lines were not to
be wholly hidden by the heavy muffling
weeds she wore. " I have nothing but this
to hope for, to work for, to live for. This is
all I have saved from the past, all that is
left to me in the future."

Her delicate dark brows gathered
themselves threateningly over her intense eyes,
as she added, in a soft deep voice:

"There would be one thing left for me
to do if I lost my child. One thing, and
only one. To curse the hand—whether it
were the hand of God or of man—that
took her from me."

I answered her coldly; as far as I could,
carelessly. I steeled myself against the
tragic truth of her words; but I was
conscious of a creeping of my flesh.

"Madam," I said, "you are at liberty
to change your mind. All arrangements
that have been made, can be unmade. I
would, however, advise you to avoid
agitating the child."

This drew her eyes from mine to the
small face on her breast. She had not
raised her voice, had not indulged in any
gesture; had not betrayed, except in the
blanching of her face and the intense
passion of her eyes, her agitation; the child
was too young to understand her words.
And yet, as we both looked at it now, its
lips had parted, its face had flushed, its eyes
and mouth and chin were quivering with
emotion.

Perhaps the little creature was distressed
by the vibrations of its mother's strongly-
pulsating heart, against which it was held
so closely.

She bent over it, held her face against
its face, murmured soothing sounds. I was
holding the door open. She now passed
out without another word, and began to
descend the stairs.

I stood looking after her: my eyes were
caught by the glorious great knot of bright
hair, which, all pulled back from her face,
escaped from her bonnet behind. A slanting
beam from the window had touched
and fired it as she passed down the stairs.

Half-way down she stopped, turned, and
looked back and up at me. When the
mother looked, her child looked too. They
remained so, for perhaps half a minute.

How often afterwards, in dreams of the
night, in waking visions of the dark, and
worse, far worse, in the broad daylight and
peopling the sunshine, looking up from the
grass, or from the water, looking forth
from the trees, or the flowers, hovering
between her and other faces, did I meet those
haunting eyes: the two pairs of eyes, so
like in their difference, gazing at me with
varying expressions of appeal, reproach,
agony, or—worst of all—resignation!

"Good-evening, Mrs. Rosscar."

I turned back into the room, but could
not hinder myself, a few moments after,
from looking out to see if she were still
there. She was gone.

During the Friday and Saturday
intervening between that day and the
Monday, I hardly thought of the mother and
child. I thought constantly, and with
feverish eagerness, of the operation, and
of the triumph of its success; but I did
not realise the quivering agony of body
and spirit—the child's body (even if all
sensation were deadened for the moments
of operation, there must be keen suffering
afterwards), the mother's spirit—implied
even in success. As to failure, I did not
admit its possibility.

On the Sunday I was restless. I felt it
needful to do something. I could not
apply to book-study, and from the more
practical part of study the day shut me off.
I got on board one of the river steamers,
not designing anything but to get out in
the country, and have a good walk. But
the first person my eye fell on, when I
looked round the crowded deck, was Mrs.
Rosscar; her child, of course, in her arms.

For a moment I felt afraid lest this might
mean that my patient was escaping me.

"Where are you going?" I asked her,
abruptly.

"1 do not know," she answered, with
her quiet voice and rare smile. " You
recommended me to give the child all the
air I could. I thought of landing at one of
the pleasant green places, and sitting about
in the fields for a few hours, and then
taking the evening boat back again. I
thought, at some farmhouse or small inn,
I could get some food for her—at all events,
milk and eggs and bread-and-butter."

I was standing on the deck, in front of
her. I said, what suddenly occurred to
me:

"You are much too beautiful and too
young, to go about alone in this way, among
such people."

"I dare say I am beautiful, and I know
I am not old; but my beauty is not of the
sort to draw on me the impertinence of
common people. I am not young in my
soul. I know how to protect myself."