s;
her features, though far from being regular, were piquant, and when
she was speaking lighted into fascinating animation with every passing
emotion.

"I shall be free!" Edith murmured again with a long-drawn sigh of
relief, "for of course you will assert your claim upon him, and"--with
a glance at the child--"he will not dare to deny it."

"You are so anxious to be free? You would bless me for helping you to
be free?" repeated her companion, studying the girl's face earnestly,
questioningly.

"Ah, yes; I was almost in despair when you came in," Edith replied,
shivering, and with starting tears; "now I begin to hope that my life
has not been utterly ruined."

Her visitor flushed crimson, and her great black eyes flashed with
sudden anger.

"My curse be upon him for all the evil he has done!" she cried,
passionately. "Oh! how gladly would I break the bond that binds you to
him, but--I have not the power; I have no claim upon him."

Edith regarded her with astonishment.

"No claim upon him?" she repeated, with another glance at the little
one who was gazing from one to another with wondering eyes.

The mother's glance followed hers, and an expression of despair swept
over her face.

"Oh, Holy Virgin, pity me!" she moaned, a blush of shame mantling her
cheeks.

Then lifting her heavy eyes once more to Edith, she continued,
falteringly:

"The boy is his and--mine; but--I have no legal claim upon him--I am
no wife."

For a moment after this humiliating confession there was an unbroken
silence in that elegant room.

Then a hot wave of sympathetic color flashed up to Edith's brow, while
a look of tender, almost divine, compassion gleamed in her lovely
eyes.

For the time she forgot her own wretchedness in her sympathy for her
erring and more unfortunate sister--for the woman and the mother who
had been outraged beyond compare.

At length she raised her hand and laid it half-timidly, but with
exceeding kindness, upon her shoulder.

"I understand you now," she said, gently, "and I am very sorry."

The words were very simple and commonplace; but the tone, the look,
and the gesture that accompanied them spoke more than volumes, and
completely won the heart of the passionate and despairing creature
before her for all time.

They also proved too much for her self-possession, and, with a moan of
anguish, throwing herself upon her knees beside her child, she clasped
him convulsively in her arms and burst in