With famine staring her in the face, what else could the friendless woman do but return to the father of her child?
What claim had I on her, by comparison with him?
What did it matter, now that the poor creature secretly returned the love that I felt for her?
There was the child, an obstacle between us—there was his hold on her, now that he had got her back!
What was my hold worth?
All social proprieties and all social laws answered the question: Nothing!
My head sunk on my breast; I received the blow in silence.
My good mother took my hand.
"You understand it now, George?" she said, sorrowfully.
"Yes, mother; I understand it."
"There was one thing she wished me to say to you, my dear, which I have not mentioned yet.
She entreats you not to suppose that she had the faintest idea of her situation when she attempted to destroy herself.
Her first suspicion that it was possible she might become a mother was conveyed to her at Edinburgh, in a conversation with her aunt.
It is impossible, George, not to feel compassionately toward this poor woman.
Regrettable as her position is, I cannot see that she is to blame for it.
She was the innocent victim of a vile fraud when that man married her; she has suffered undeservedly since; and she has behaved nobly to you and to me.
I only do her justice in saying that she is a woman in a thousand—a woman worthy, under happier circumstances, to be my daughter and your wife.
I feel for you, and feel with you, my dear—I do, with my whole heart."
So this scene in my life was, to all appearance, a scene closed forever.
As it had been with my love, in the days of my boyhood, so it was again now with the love of my riper age!
Later in the day, when I had in some degree recovered my self-possession, I wrote to Mr. Van Brandt—as she had foreseen I should write!—to apologize for breaking my engagement to dine with him.
Could I trust to a letter also, to say the farewell words for me to the woman whom I had loved and lost?
No!
It was better for her, and better for me, that I should not write.
And yet the idea of leaving her in silence was more than my fortitude could endure.
Her last words at parting (as they were repeated to me by my mother) had expressed the hope that I should not think hardly of her in the future.
How could I assure her that I should think of her tenderly to the end of my life?
My mother's delicate tact and true sympathy showed me the way.
"Send a little present, George," she said, "to the child.
You bear no malice to the poor little child?"
God knows I was not hard on the child!
I went out myself and bought her a toy.
I brought it home, and before I sent it away, I pinned a slip of paper to it, bearing this inscription:
"To your little daughter, from George Germaine."
There is nothing very pathetic, I suppose, in those words. And yet I burst out crying when I had written them.
The next morning my mother and I set forth for my country-house in Perthshire.
London was now unendurable to me.
Traveling abroad I had tried already.
Nothing was left but to go back to the Highlands, and to try what I could make of my life, with my mother still left to live for.
CHAPTER XVI. MY MOTHER'S DIARY.
THERE is something repellent to me, even at this distance of time, in looking back at the dreary days, of seclusion which followed each other monotonously in my Highland home.
The actions of my life, however trifling they may have been, I can find some interest in recalling: they associate me with my fellow-creatures; they connect me, in some degree, with the vigorous movement of the world.
But I have no sympathy with the purely selfish pleasure which some men appear to derive from dwelling on the minute anatomy of their own feelings, under the pressure of adverse fortune.
Let the domestic record of our stagnant life in Perthshire (so far as I am concerned in it) be presented in my mother's words, not in mine.
A few lines of extract from the daily journal which it was her habit to keep will tell all that need be told before this narrative advances to later dates and to newer scenes.
"20th August.—We have been two months at our home in Scotland, and I see no change in George for the better.
He is as far as ever, I fear, from being reconciled to his separation from that unhappy woman.
Nothing will induce him to confess it himself.
He declares that his quiet life here with me is all that he desires.
But I know better!