Isabel, I baptize thee in the name of the Father + and of the Son
+ and of the Holy Ghost.+"

Except that baby cried a little when the water was poured on her head
(as she had cried when the salt was put on her tongue), I knew no more
after that until I saw the candle in the godfather's hand (which
signified that my child had been made a Child of Light) and heard the
priest say:

"Go in peace and the Lord be with thee."

Then I awoke as from a trance. There was a shuffling of feet. The priest
was going away. The solemn rite was at an end.

I rose from my knees, put a little money in the plate which the
sacristan held out to me, gave a shilling to each of the two old
sponsors, took baby back into my arms, and sat down in a pew to put on
her bonnet and veil.

The spiritual exaltation which had sustained me lasted until I reached
the street where the other mothers and their friends were laughing and
joking, in voices that had to be pitched high over the rattle of the
traffic, about going to the house opposite to "wet the baby's head."

But I think something of the celestial light of the sacrament must have
been on my face still when I reached home, for I remember that as I
knocked at the door, and waited for the rope from the kitchen to open
it, I heard one of my neighbours say:

"Our lady has taken a new lease of life, hasn't she?"

I thought I had--a great new lease of physical and spiritual life.

But how little did I know what Fate had in store for me!

NINETIETH CHAPTER

I was taking off baby's outdoor things when my Welsh landlady came up to
ask how I had got on, and after I had told her she said:

And now thee'st got to get the jewel registered."

"Registered?"

"Within three weeks. It's the law, look you."

That was the first thing that frightened me. I had filled up truthfully
enough the card which the Rector had sent me, because I knew that the
register of my Church must be as sacred as its confessional.

But a public declaration of my baby's birth and parentage seemed to be
quite another matter--charged with all the dangers to me, to Martin, and
above all to my child, which had overshadowed my life before she was
born.

More than once I felt tempted to lie, to make a false declaration, to
say that Martin had been my husband and Isabel was my legitimate child.

But at length I resolved to speak the truth, the plain truth, telling
myself that God's law was above man's law, and I had