neither maid, wife, nor
widow; with a child on my arms that I do nothing but cry over. Ay, my
poor innocent, I left thee down below, because I was ashamed she should
see thee; ah me! ah me!" She lifted up her voice, and wept.

Mrs. Gaunt looked at her wistfully, and, like Mercy before her, had a
bitter struggle with human nature,--a struggle so sharp that, in the
midst of it, she burst out crying with great violence; but, with that
burst, her great soul conquered.

She darted out of the room, leaving Mercy astonished at her abrupt
departure.

Mercy was patiently drying her eyes, when the door opened, and judge her
surprise when she saw Mrs. Gaunt glide into the room with her little boy
asleep in her arms, and an expression upon her face more sublime than
anything Mercy Vint had ever yet seen on earth. She kissed the babe
softly, and, becoming infantine as well as angelic by this contact, sat
herself down in a moment on the floor with him, and held out her hand to
Mercy. "There," said she, "come, sit beside us, and see how I hate
him,--no more than you do; sweet innocent."

They looked him all over, discussed his every feature learnedly, kissed
his limbs and extremities after the manner of their sex, and,
comprehending at last that to have been both of them wronged by one man
was a bond of sympathy, not hate, the two wives of Griffith Gaunt laid
his child across their two laps, and wept over him together.

* * * * *

Mercy Vint took herself to task. "I am but a selfish woman," said she,
"to talk or think of anything but that I came here for." She then
proceeded to show Mrs. Gaunt by what means she proposed to secure her
acquittal, without getting Griffith Gaunt into trouble.

Mrs. Gaunt listened with keen and grateful attention, until she came to
that part; then she interrupted her eagerly. "Don't spare him for me. In
your place I'd trounce the villain finely."

"Ay," said Mercy, "and then forgive him; but I am different. I shall
never forgive him; but I am a poor hand at punishing and revenging. I
always was. My name is Mercy, you know. To tell the truth, I was to have
been called Prudence, after my good aunt; but she said, nay; she had
lived to hear Greed, and Selfishness, and a heap of faults, named
Prudence. 'Call the child something that means what it does mean, and
not after me,' quoth she. So with me hearing 'Mercy, Mercy,' called out
after me so many years, I do think the q