But never, save when the child was ill, had she desponded or abated heart and hope.

She should see him again, and he would kiss her child.

And now--no--I cannot paint the might of that stunning blow! She knew not, she dreamed not, of the kind precautions Maltravers had taken; and he had not sufficiently calculated on her thorough ignorance of the world.

How could she divine that the magistrate, not a mile distant from her, could have told her all she sought to know?
Could she but have met the gardener--or the old woman-servant--all would have been well! These last, indeed, she had the forethought to ask for.

But the woman was dead, and the gardener had taken a strange service in some distant county.