d threatening as was the night. She
tore off her gown; she put her hair back from her heated face. It
seemed now as if she could not think--as if thought and emotion had
been repressed so sternly that they would not come to relieve her
stupified brain. Till all at once, like a flash of lightning, her
life, past and present, was revealed to her in its minutest detail.
And when she saw her very present "Now," the strange confusion of
agony was too great to be borne, and she cried aloud. Then she was
quite dead, and listened as to the sound of galloping armies.

"If I might see him! If I might see him! If I might just ask him why
he left me; if I had vexed him in any way; it was so strange--so
cruel! It was not him; it was his mother," said she, almost fiercely,
as if answering herself. "Oh, God! but he might have found me out
before this," she continued, sadly. "He did not care for me, as I
did for him. He did not care for me at all," she went on wildly and
sharply. "He did me cruel harm. I can never again lift up my face in
innocence. They think I have forgotten all, because I do not speak.
Oh, darling love! am I talking against you?" asked she, tenderly. "I
am so torn and perplexed! You, who are the father of my child!"

But that very circumstance, full of such tender meaning in many
cases, threw a new light into her mind. It changed her from the woman
into the mother--the stern guardian of her child. She was still for a
time, thinking. Then she began again, but in a low, deep voice,

"He left me. He might have been hurried off, but he might have
inquired--he might have learnt, and explained. He left me to bear
the burden and the shame; and never cared to learn, as he might have
done, of Leonard's birth. He has no love for his child, and I will
have no love for him."

She raised her voice while uttering this determination, and then,
feeling her own weakness, she moaned out, "Alas! alas!"

And then she started up, for all this time she had been rocking
herself backwards and forwards as she sat on the ground, and began to
pace the room with hurried steps.

"What am I thinking of? Where am I? I who have been praying these
years and years to be worthy to be Leonard's mother. My God! what a
depth of sin is in my heart! Why, the old time would be as white as
snow to what it would be now, if I sought him out, and prayed for the
explanation, which should re-establish him in my heart. I who have
striven (or made a mock of