left everything behind to
obey his summons; and he thanked her with eager warmth by raising the
hand which clasped his to his lips.

What he desired of her would be hard for her to do, but now that he knew
her it was far harder to ask. Yet it must be done, because upon this
might perhaps depend the great hopes which he fixed upon the future, and
which would atone for what had so cruelly embittered and poisoned the
past.

Barbara gazed more intently into the noble face whose blooming youthful
beauty had just delighted her, and in doing so perceived far more
distinctly the sorrowful, anxious expression which she had formerly
thought she noticed. In pained surprise she inquired what cause he, whom
Heaven had hitherto loaded with its most precious gifts, had to complain
of Fate, as whose spoiled favourite she, like all the rest of the world,
had believed him happy.

He laughed softly, but with such keen bitterness that it pierced her to
the heart, and the bright flush with which joy had suffused her cheeks
suddenly vanished.

Her favourite of Fortune indignantly rejected the belief that he had
reason to look back upon his past life with gratitude and pleasure.

It was incomprehensible and, carried away by the violent agitation which
seized upon her, she described with fiery vivacity how the conviction
that he had gained everything which her hard sacrifice and her prayers
had sought, had beautified her life and helped her to bear even the most
painful trials with quiet submission, nay, with joyous gratitude.

Stimulated by the power of the extraordinary things which she had
experienced, she described in a ceaseless flow of vivid words how she
had torn her child from her soul in order to place it in the path which
was to lead to fame, splendour, and honour--in short, to everything that
adorns and lends value to life.

"And why, in the name of all the saints," she concluded, "why must I now
tell myself that I endured this great suffering in vain, and that what
filled my heart with joy was only an idle delusion? Yet I watched your
steps as the hunter follows the trail of the game. I saw how every fresh
onset led you to greater splendour, higher renown, and more exalted
grandeur."

His cheeks, too, had now flushed. What life was still pulsing in the
veins of this woman, already past her youth! with what impressive power
she understood how to describe what moved her! Yet how mistaken was
the view to which maternal love