lly as
you now play the _role_ of the tender mother, in your heart you will be
grateful to me if I relieve you of this burdensome duty; and he too,
the most fickle of men--believe me, if he only had a reasonable pretext
before the world, he would console himself in your possession, and
would rejoice that I had been so good-natured as to have removed from
his sight, without his express consent, the remembrance of an old
guilt!"

She made a movement as if to draw the child to her arms, but it only
clung the tighter to Julie.

"Take me away," it whispered to her, in a low voice. "Let us go
away--to dear papa--I don't want to go to that woman again."

Julie stroked the little head, and pressed it to her side. She covered
the child's ears so thickly with its soft hair that not a word of all
this sad and bitter talk could reach its young soul.

"Thank you," she said, "you have drawn a thorn from my conscience by
these disclosures. 'Perhaps, after all, he did her an injustice,' I
said to myself. 'Perhaps he was too violent, too hasty; and even if she
has been guilty of a great sin toward him, is it not punishment enough
that the mother has been deprived of her child for so many years? And
can I answer for it to this child for having forever destroyed all
hopes of a reconciliation between her parents?' This often gave me some
misgivings; but I candidly confess to you, from this day forth my
conscience will be easy on that score. No matter what you may say in
order to palliate what you have done, you cannot have the only real
justification, a true and genuine love for your child; if you did, how
could you entertain the thought that I would be glad to get rid of her?
Such a thing could only be said and believed by a woman who let five
years pass away without once trying to see, at any cost, the child she
had borne; and who never even waited in the streets that she might have
a chance to press it to her heart and kiss it once again. Such a
thought could only be entertained by the woman who believed that the
father of this child was capable of sacrificing it to his new-born
happiness, and would look on with indifference while it pined and
languished for want of a true mother's love. And you reproach me for
having plighted my troth to this man who never belonged to you, for you
never understood him, and never knew his worth, his nobility, and his
greatness. You may do your best to destroy his happiness and to
undermine his peac