Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/171

Rh "Yesterday it was my child that woke me; to-day another woman's," she thought, and hid her face in her hands. He stood at the window, drumming upon it with his fingers. What! all this beauty was not hers. The fine limbs, the proud head, those dear eyes. Not hers. She may not look upon them with pride again—rather with envy and hatred. She may not lovingly trace in them again a likeness to her dead husband. This child of the other woman. What was it there for?—to grow up in place of her own and come into his inheritance. All the Osborne lands, the old mansions she was so proud of—everything to go to this nobody. Yes, now she realized it all. Yesterday she had lost her son, the son who was so carefully reared, the son who was to have made the proud old name continue. And to-day her childless heart had turned to ashes. She bid the boy leave the room, and he went, chilled by her voice. She could no longer be loving to this child of a stranger, since her child had known no love. She would not hold this boy to her heart, since her own would never lie there. Yet as he passed to the door she caught him to her and kissed his hair and 2em