Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/310

 been well from the beginning if you had trusted me and taken me into your confidence.” “I felt you’d think me so wicked!,” sobbed the poor little thing.

I told her that I couldn’t think her wicked without thinking the same of Will.

“Right and Wrong,” I said, “existed from the beginning and will endure to the end, irrespective of conventions and institutions. I say to you what I should not dare say to your father: right and wrong are older than any marriage laws. You love my boy?”

“Oh, I do,” she cried. “I never loved any one before and I could never love any one else.”

“And he loves you,” I said. “Need we say any more at present? I find it hard to spare him, but sooner or later this is a thing that comes to every mother. If I surrender him to you, will you in your turn take my place and devote yourself to him as I have tried to do? There is so little time and so many things to do that I cannot talk to you as I should like. Very soon you will be married, very soon you will both have slipped away to a very far country. Nothing that any of us can do for you both will be left undone; every penny that we can scrape together will be yours. As time goes on, you will learn how much money can do—and how