Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/137

Rh work. I fell into bad company. He left me. I actually sold my one child for drink! I did not know what I was doing. ... Now my sin has found me out. ... No one accuses me. ... I condemn myself. ... I am lost and alone."

Gwyneth calmed the conscience-stricken woman with words of which she well knew the comfort herself. Willie's story flashed to her mind as she recognized the unmistakable likeness existing between mother and child.

"If your husband and son were restored to you, could you serve them truly, and retrieve the past?"

"If they were! ... But that is impossible! Could I see my child again, and work and slave for him; could I show my husband that the devil has gone out of me at last, that the sweetness of this place has entered into my soul, I should feel that God had not cast me off. But that is impossible. My family, my God, have deserted me."

"If you had the chance of making a new home here, for your husband and son, would, you never fail again, from the old cause?"

The woman clutched the girl's hands, her eyes rolled with excitement.

"Ah, miss," she cried, sinking back on to her pillow, "if I had that chance, I would show I valued it to my dying day; but I have not. Do not mock me!"

The woman lay still. The hard expression settled on her face again.

Gwyneth rose and lightly tapped on the window, beckoning to Willie, who was picking flowers in the garden.

"See what I have got for you! The sick people grew them all themselves," cried the lad, bursting into the room.