hat the
inn could offer to us--a sort of loft at the top of the house. The night
that followed our conversation was bitterly cold. We felt the chilly
temperature, in spite of the protection of our dressing-gowns and our
traveling-wrappers. My mother-in-law slept, but no rest came to me. I
was too anxious and too wretched, thinking over my changed position, and
doubting how my husband would receive me, to be able to sleep.

Some hours, as I suppose, must have passed, and I was still absorbed in
my own melancholy thoughts, when I suddenly became conscious of a new
and strange sensation which astonished and alarmed me. I started up in
the bed, breathless and bewildered. The movement awakened Mrs. Macallan.
"Are you ill?" she asked. "What is the matter with you?" I tried to tell
her, as well as I could. She seemed to understand me before I had done;
she took me tenderly in her arms, and pressed me to her bosom. "My poor
innocent child," she said, "is it possible you don't know? Must I really
tell you?" She whispered her next words. Shall I ever forget the tumult
of feelings which the whisper aroused in me--the strange medley of joy
and fear, and wonder and relief, and pride and humility, which filled my
whole being, and made a new woman of me from that moment? Now, for the
first time, I knew it! If God spared me for a few months more, the most
enduring and the most sacred of all human joys might be mine--the joy of
being a mother.

I don't know how the rest of the night passed. I only find my memory
again when the morning came, and when I went out by myself to breathe
the crisp wintry air on the open moor behind the inn.

I have said that I felt like a new woman. The morning found me with a
new resolution and a new courage. When I thought of the future, I had
not only my husband to consider now. His good name was no longer his
own and mine--it might soon become the most precious inheritance that
he could leave to his child. What had I done while I was in ignorance of
this? I had resigned the hope of cleansing his name from the stain that
rested on it--a stain still, no matter how little it might look in the
eye of the Law. Our child might live to hear malicious tongues say,
"Your father was tried for the vilest of all murders, and was never
absolutely acquitted of the charge." Could I face the glorious perils of
childbirth with that possibility present to my mind? No! not until I had
made one more effort to lay the consci