that the gift of life had come to her.

She was a gentle, a solicitous, a devoted mother. She never looked at
her baby without a sense of tears. Unfortunate one, was her thought, and
the pulse of her life was the yearning to atone.

She must be strong and wise for her child and out of her knowledge of
sin and weakness in herself must guide and guard it. But in her
yearning, in her brooding thought, was none of the mother's rapturous
folly and gladness. She never kissed her baby. Some dark association
made the thought of kisses an unholy thing and when, forgetting, she
leaned to it sometimes, thoughtless, and delighting in littleness and
sweetness, the dark memory of guilt would rise between its lips and
hers, so that she would grow pale and draw back.

When first she saw her husband, Augustine was over a year old. Sir Hugh
had written and asked if he might not come down one day and spend an
hour with her. "And let all the old fogies see that we are friends," he
said, in his remembered playful vein.

It was in the long dark drawing-room that she had seen him for the first
time since her flight into the wilderness.

He had come in, grave, yet with something blithe and unperturbed in his
bearing that, as she stood waiting for what he might say to her, seemed
the very nimbus of chivalry. He was splendid to look at, too, tall and
strong with clear kind eyes and clear kind smile.

She could not speak, not even when he came and took her hand, and said:
"Well Amabel." And then, seeing how white she was and how she trembled,
he had bent his head and kissed her hand. And at that she had broken
into tears; but they were tears of joy.

He stood beside her while she wept, her hands before her face, just
touching her shoulder with a paternal hand, and she heard him saying:
"Poor little Amabel: poor little girl."

She took her chair beside the table and for a long time she kept her
face hidden: "Thank you; thank you;" was all that she could say.

"My dear, what for?--There, don't cry.--You have stopped crying? There,
poor child. I've been awfully sorry for you."

He would not let her try to say how good he was, and this was a relief,
for she knew that she could not put it into words and that, without
words, he understood. He even laughed a little, with a graceful
embarrassment, at her speechless gratitude. And presently, when they
talked, she could put down her hand, could look round at him, while she
answered that, yes, sh