"'The trail of the serpent is over all.' Can there be pardon for the
man who makes me shrink shudderingly at times from her whose little
veins were fed from mine, whose pulses are but a throb from my heart,
my baby! My own baby, who, when I snatch her in my arms, smiles at me
with his wonderful eyes of blue; and wellnigh maddens me with the
very echo of a voice whose wily sweetness won my love, to make an
hour's pastime, a cheap toy, soon worn out, worthless and trodden
under foot after three weeks' sport! Stooping over my baby, when she
stretched her little hands and coaxed me to lift her on my lap, I
have started back from the sight of her innocent face, as if a hooded
viper fawned upon me; for the curse of her father's image has smitten
my only darling, my beautiful, proud child! O God! that we had both
died in that dim damp ward of the Hospital, where she first opened
her eyes, unwelcomed by the father, whose features she bears!"

But beneath this Marah tide that was surging so fiercely over her
long-suffering heart, bubbled the pure, sweet, incorruptible fount of
mother-love, and while she studied the fair childish face her own
softened, as that of some snow image whose features gradually melt as
the sunlight creeps across it. It was a picture taken after Regina's
removal to the parsonage, and represented her with the white rabbits
nestling in her arms.

"My proud little Regina! my pure sensitive darling! How much longer
must we be separated? Will the time ever come when the only earthly
rest that remains for me can be taken in her soft clinging arms?
Patience--patience. If it were not for her--for my baby--I might
falter even now,--but she must, she shall be righted--at any
sacrifice, at every cost; and may the widow's and the orphan's God be
pitiful--be pitiful--at last."

She raised her child's picture in her clasped hands, as if appealing
indeed to the justice of Him who "never slumbers, nor sleeps," and
the tremor of her lips and voice told how passionate was the
affection for her daughter, how powerful the motives that sustained
her in the prolonged and torturing ordeal.

Restoring the portraits to their hiding-place, she locked the trunk,
and as she resumed her seat seemed suddenly to recollect the letters
lying on the table.

One was a brief note, from the manager of the London theatre where
she had recently been engaged; the second from a celebrated
money-lender, which bore only the signature, "Simo