"Will you not wake, darling," she murmured, "and let me see your dear eyes? Wake, darling, wake! Do you not know what is going to happen? They are going to take you from me. Perhaps we shall never meet again; and if we do, you have not even a name by which I can call you. But perhaps that will not matter. Surely you will know your mother, surely I shall know my child, and we shall fly to each other's arms. I want to tell you all this--I want you to hear it. Wake, sweet, wake!"
The child slept on. Presently she murmured, "It is hard, it is hard! How can God permit such cruelty?"
Half an hour passed in this way, and then she became more composed. Her mind, which had been unbalanced by her misfortunes, recovered its equilibrium, and she could reason with comparative calmness upon the future. In sorrow and pain she mentally mapped out the years to come. She saw her future, as she believed, a joyless life, a life of cold duty. She would not entertain the possibility of a brighter side, the possibility of her becoming reconciled to her fate, of her growing to love her husband, of her having other children who would be as dear to her as this one was. In the state of her feelings it seemed to her monstrous to entertain such ideas, a wrong perpetrated upon the babe she was deserting. In dogged rebellion she hugged misery to her breast, and dwelt upon it as part of the punishment she had brought upon herself. There was no hope of happiness for her in the future, there was no ray of light to illumine her path. For ever would she be thinking of the child for whom now, for the first time since its birth, she felt a mother's love, and who was henceforth to find a home among strangers.
In this hopeless fashion did she muse for some time, and then a star appeared in her dark sky. She might, as she had suggested to Dr. Spenlove, survive her husband; it was more than possible, it was probable, and, though there was in the contemplation a touch of treason towards the man who had come to her rescue, she derived satisfaction from it. In the event of his death she must adopt some steps to prove that the child was hers, and that she, and she alone, had the sole right to her. No stranger should keep her darling from her, should rob her of her reward for the sufferings she had undergone. It was for this reason that she had asked Dr. Spenlove for the iron box.
