Never had she felt the illimitable power which a woman's love possesses of absorbing into itself every other event, every other joy or sorrow of her life, as she felt it then.

Never had she so tenderly associated Frank with the memory of her lost parents, as at that moment.

Never had the impenetrable atmosphere of illusion through which women behold the man of their choice--the atmosphere which had blinded her to all that was weak, selfish, and mean in Frank's nature--surrounded him with a brighter halo than now, when she was pleading with the father for the possession of the son.

"Oh, don't ask me to give him up!" she said, trying to take courage, and shuddering from head to foot.

In the next instant, she flew to the opposite extreme, with the suddenness of a flash of lightning.