ith me, and promise you that I will try
hard to think of you without anger."

"The child?"

"The child that you have just stolen, that you wished to keep with you
in pawn, that you might carry out Heaven knows what miserable scheme."

"You are very much mistaken," she interposed, and a slight blush
mounted to her cheeks. "The child is not here."

"Don't attempt to deceive me!" he cried, with sudden fury. "I know you
have kidnapped the child--it is asleep in the next room--you fled to
this place to conceal your capture from me; to-morrow, early, you
intended to continue the flight."

"You are raving again!" she said calmly, and laid the scissors down on
the table. "Look yourself, and see whether the child is here with me.
There stands the lamp; search the house, if you do not believe me."

He stretched out his hand mechanically, took the light, and opened the
door of the adjoining chamber. The beds that stood there were empty.

With a threatening look he turned upon her.

"Shall I search the house room by room?" he asked, his voice trembling
with anger.

"It would be useless trouble. I swear to you, I did not bring the child
with me."

"Trickster!" he cried, setting the light down on the table with such
force that the flame was almost extinguished. "Only this once the
truth--only this once! Where is the child? What have you done with her?
In whose hands--"

"In the best of hands," she interrupted, "under the very safest
protection, so help me God! I--it is true--I had an irresistible
longing to see my poor child once more, whom you have made motherless
and to whom you wish to give a mother who can have no heart for the
orphan. If it is a crime for the real mother not to wish to see her
child given to the false one, then I have committed such a crime. I
wanted to steal it for myself, to be a thief of that which is my own,
purchased with pain and lost with pain; but it happened differently--I
was not to have it, in punishment for not having defended my rights
more boldly. Oh! and this cruel, pitiless man, who has robbed me of
everything, even of this last short, desperate consolation--"

Her voice appeared to fail her. She covered her face with her white
hands, and was silent. But the time when she might have deceived him
was past.

"Where is the child?" he asked, after a short pause, stepping close up
to her.

She did not remove her hands from before her eyes.

"I sent it back to you. I saw that the in