e; during my sleepless
nights I missed in the darkness the soft breathing of the little
child; each morning I longed in vain for the clinging arms and soft,
sweet kisses. At last health broke down, and fever struck me, and
mercifully gave me the rest of pain and delirium instead of the agony
of conscious loss. Through that terrible illness, day after day, Mr.
Bradlaugh came to me, and sat writing beside me, feeding me with ice
and milk, refused from all others, and behaving more like a tender
mother than a man friend; he saved my life, though it seemed to me for
awhile of little value, till the first months of lonely pain were
over. When recovered, I took steps to set aside an order obtained by
Mr. Besant during my illness, forbidding me to bring any suit against
him, and even the Master of the Rolls, on hearing that all access had
been denied to me, and the money due to me stopped, uttered words of
strong condemnation of the way in which I had been treated. Finally
the deed of separation executed in 1873 was held to be good as
protecting Mr. Besant from any suit brought by me, whether for divorce
or for restitution of conjugal rights, while the clauses giving me the
custody of the child were set aside. The Court of Appeal in April,
1879, upheld the decision, the absolute right of the father as against
a married mother being upheld. This ignoring of all right to her
children on the part of the married mother is a scandal and a wrong
that has since been redressed by Parliament, and the husband has no
longer in his grasp this instrument of torture, whose power to agonise
depends on the tenderness and strength of the motherliness of the
wife. In the days when the law took my child from me, it virtually
said to all women: "Choose which of these two positions, as wife and
mother, you will occupy. If you are legally your husband's wife, you
can have no legal claim to your children; if legally you are your
husband's mistress, your rights as mother are secure." That stigma on
marriage is now removed.

One thing I gained in the Court of Appeal. The Court expressed a
strong view as to my right of access, and directed me to apply to Sir
George Jessel for it, adding that it could not doubt he would grant
it. Under cover of this I applied to the Master of the Rolls, and
obtained liberal access to the children; but I found that my visits
kept Mabel in a continual state of longing and fretting for me, while
the ingenious forms of pet