looked
prettier still in the dainty garb that had replaced his baby-clothes,
were pledges of a happy future for the little one, in whom she saw her
own life renewed.

"The curate of Saint Sulpice witnessed my terrible distress. His words
well-nigh made me despair. He did not attempt to offer conventional
consolation, and put the gravity of my responsibilities unsparingly
before me, but I had no need of a spur. The conscience within me spoke
loudly enough already. A woman had placed a generous confidence in me.
I had lied to her from the first; I had told her that I loved her, and
then I had cast her off; I had brought all this sorrow upon an unhappy
girl who had braved the opinion of the world for me, and who therefore
should have been sacred in my eyes. She had died forgiving me. Her
implicit trust in the word of a man who had once before broken his
promise to her effaced the memory of all her pain and grief, and she
slept in peace. Agatha, who had given me her girlish faith, had found in
her heart another faith to give me--the faith of a mother. Oh! sir, the
child, _her_ child! God alone can know all that he was to me! The dear
little one was like his mother; he had her winning grace in his little
ways, his talk and ideas; but for me, my child was not only a child, but
something more; was he not the token of my forgiveness, my honor?

"He should have more than a father's affection. He should be loved as
his mother would have loved him. My remorse might change to happiness if
I could only make him feel that his mother's arms were still about him.
I clung to him with all the force of human love and the hope of heaven,
with all the tenderness in my heart that God has given to mothers. The
sound of the child's voice made me tremble. I used to watch him while
he slept with a sense of gladness that was always new, albeit a tear
sometimes fell on his forehead; I taught him to come to say his prayer
upon my bed as soon as he awoke. How sweet and touching were the simple
words of the _Pater noster_ in the innocent childish mouth! Ah! and at
times how terrible! '_Our Father which art in heaven_,' he began one
morning; then he paused--'Why is it not _our mother_?' he asked, and my
heart sank at his words.

"From the very first I had sown the seeds of future misfortune in
the life of the son whom I idolized. Although the law has almost
countenanced errors of youth by conceding to tardy regret a legal status
to natural children