“I don’t understand it,” she said, and then pushing me away suddenly.  “No! you cannot know, that I—­I—­I was the first to devise mischief against that boy.  Perrault would never have thought of it, but for me!  Now, you see whom you are harbouring!  Perhaps, you thought it all Perrault’s doing.”

“No, we did not,” I said.

“And you still cherish me!  I—­who drove you from your home and rank, and came from wishing the death of your darling, to contriving it!”

I told her we knew it.  And at last, after a long, long silence, she looked up from her joined hands, and said, “If I may only see my child again, even from the other side of the great gulf, I would be ready for any torment!  It would be no torment to me, so I saw him!  Do you think I shall be allowed, Ursula?”

How I longed for more power, more words to tell her how infinitely more mercy there was than she thought of!  I don’t think she took it in then, but the beginning was made, and she turned away no more from what she looked on at first as a means of bringing her to her boy, but by-and-by became even more to her.

Gradually she told how the whole history had come about.  She had thought nothing of the discovery of her birth till her boy was born, but from that time the one thought of seeing him in the rank she thought his due had eaten into her heart.  She had loved her husband before, but his resistance had chafed her, and gradually she felt it an injustice and cruelty, and her love and respect withered away, till she regarded him as an obstacle.  And when she had spent her labour on the voyage, and obtained recognition from her father—­ behold!  Alured’s existence deprived her of the prize almost within her grasp.

A settled desire for the poor baby’s death was the consequence, kept up by the continued reports of his danger.  Till that time she had prayed.  Then a sense that Heaven was unjust to her and her boy filled her with grim rebellion, and she prayed no more; and Perrault, by his constant return to the subject and speculations on it, kept her mind on it far more.

But Alured lived, and every time she saw him she half hated him, half loved him; hated him as standing in her son’s light, loved him because she could not help loving Trevor’s shadow.

That day, when Emily met them—­it had been a sudden impulse—­Alured had been talking to her about his plans for Trevor’s birthday; and, as he spoke of that street, the wild thought came over her how easily a fever might yet sweep him away.  And yet she says, all down the street, she was trying to persuade herself to forget Emily’s warning, and to disbelieve in the infection.  After all, she thought, even if she had not met Emily, she should have made some excuse for turning back, such a pitiful thought came of the fair, fresh face flushing and dying.

But it was prevented, only it left fruits; for Perrault had heard what passed between her and Trevorsham.  “Did you take him to the shop?” he asked.  And when she mentioned Miss Deerhurst’s reminder, he said, “Ah! that game wants skill and coolness to carry it out.”