there, too, appeared a bed, but one, and that a very small one; her face
(the night I followed and observed her) changed as she approached this
tiny couch; from grave it warmed to earnest; she shaded with one hand
the lamp she held in the other; she bent above the pillow and hung
over a child asleep; its slumber (that evening at least, and usually,
I believe) was sound and calm; no tear wet its dark eyelashes; no fever
heated its round cheek; no ill dream discomposed its budding features.
Frances gazed, she did not smile, and yet the deepest delight filled,
flushed her face; feeling pleasurable, powerful, worked in her whole
frame, which still was motionless. I saw, indeed, her heart heave, her
lips were a little apart, her breathing grew somewhat hurried; the child
smiled; then at last the mother smiled too, and said in low soliloquy,
"God bless my little son!" She stooped closer over him, breathed the
softest of kisses on his brow, covered his minute hand with hers, and
at last started up and came away. I regained the parlour before her.
Entering it two minutes later she said quietly as she put down her
extinguished lamp--

"Victor rests well: he smiled in his sleep; he has your smile,
monsieur."

The said Victor was of course her own boy, born in the third year of
our marriage: his Christian name had been given him in honour of M.
Vandenhuten, who continued always our trusty and well-beloved friend.

Frances was then a good and dear wife to me, because I was to her a
good, just, and faithful husband. What she would have been had she
married a harsh, envious, careless man--a profligate, a prodigal,
a drunkard, or a tyrant--is another question, and one which I once
propounded to her. Her answer, given after some reflection, was--

"I should have tried to endure the evil or cure it for awhile; and when
I found it intolerable and incurable, I should have left my torturer
suddenly and silently."

"And if law or might had forced you back again?"

"What, to a drunkard, a profligate, a selfish spendthrift, an unjust
fool?"

"Yes."

"I would have gone back; again assured myself whether or not his vice
and my misery were capable of remedy; and if not, have left him again."

"And if again forced to return, and compelled to abide?"

"I don't know," she said, hastily. "Why do you ask me, monsieur?"

I would have an answer, because I saw a strange kind of spirit in her
eye, whose voice I determined to waken.

"Mons