with which Mrs. Noel now said:

"If you have been unfortunate, poor girl, and have been led into trouble
without fault of your own, as may possibly be, no one could pity you
more than I. I can imagine such a case, and I could not look at you and
think any evil of you. But if you know the world at all, you must know
that these things--let a woman be utterly free from fault herself--carry
their inexorable consequences."

"I know the world but little," said Christine, "and yet I know that."

"Then, my dear child, you cannot wonder that the woman so unfortunately
situated is thought to be debarred from honorable marriage."

"I do not wonder when I meet with this judgment in the world or in
you. I only wondered when I found in your son a being too high for
it--a being to whom right is right and pureness is pureness, as it is
to God. You will remember, madame, that it was your son who claimed
that I was not debarred from honorable marriage, and not I. Oh, I have
suffered--you were right. No wonder that the sign of it is branded on my
forehead for all the world to see. I have suffered in a way as far
beyond the worst pain you have ever known as that pain of yours has been
from pleasure. You have known death in its most awful form when it took
from you your dearest ones, but I have known death too. My little baby,
who was like the very core of my heart, round which the heartstrings
twisted, and the clinging flesh was wrapped, was torn away from me by
death, and it was pain and anguish unspeakable--but I have known a
suffering compared to which that agony was joy. There can be worse
things to bear than the death of your heart's dearest treasure--at least
I know it may be so with women. And it was because you were a woman,
with a woman's possibilities of pain, that I wanted to come to you--to
tell you all, and let you say whether I am a fit wife for your son."

Ah, poor Christine! She felt, as she spoke those words, the silent,
still, impalpable recoil in her companion's heart. She knew the poor
woman was trying to be kind and merciful and sympathetic, but she also
knew that what she had just said had rendered Noel's mother the foe and
opposer of this marriage, instead of its friend.

"Go on, tell me all," his mother said, and that subtle change of voice
and manner was distincter still to the acute consciousness of
Christine's suffering soul. "I will be your friend whatever happens, and
I honor you for the spirit in which y