As he recalled the way in which he expressed himself, a qualm of shame crossed his heart.  “A selfish brute!” he groaned in spirit:  “never occurring to him to yield, always trying to bend her.”  Well, there was nothing for him that morning, and he had gone off with a hot heart, feeling that any thing was better than the life of disinclination he was forced to lead, if he remained.  Yes, the room was as little changed as she, there, coming toward him with outstretched hands.

Although her eyes fell beneath his searching glances, and hot blushes suffused her cheeks, she, the mother of his child and many years gone his wife, he did not move one step to meet her advances.  O, her pitiable confusion!

“Our child,” he said, “the beautiful little daughter you have given me, tells me you still care for me, though, God knows, I don’t see how you could, except that it is your nature and you can’t help it.  But what I want to know is this, has the outrage I put upon you caused the fire, that once burned in your heart for me, to smoulder to ashes, where only a pleasant warmth remains, or is there still fire there that I can rekindle to the old-time blaze, no matter what the effort required?  What I want, Julia, is my old place in your heart, if I can have it.  I was never a man that could do things in moderation; and, God help me, undeserving as I am, that and that alone will satisfy me.”

“The fire still burns, my husband; O, how can you doubt it?”

And then the hungry arms closed about her.  After a little, when she had fixed him cosily on the couch and was kneeling beside him, he said: 

“I am not by nature an humble man, nor one glib at confession; but there is one thing I will say, my love, this choleric temperament of mine has been to me severer flagellation than was ever administered by priestly hands in expiation of heinous offenses.  But I will down it yet, my love; God helping me, I will down it yet.”

The door opened and a golden head was visible.

“May I come in, dear Mamma?”

Colonel Marsden stretched forth his disengaged hand and drew the child to him.

“She is like you, love,” he said fondly.

“Her eyes are yours, Robert.  I remember, when she was a baby, how I used to hang over her, longing for her to awaken, that I might see her eyes.”

Colonel Marsden’s grasp tightened on his wife’s slender white fingers.

“Mam’ Sarah was afraid I would make her nervous.  She would steal her away, carry her down to the loom-house, and rock her to sleep on her lap.”

“I remember it perfectly, Mamma,” said Roberta, grave as an owl.  “I wore the same robe and cloak and cap that I dressed the gun in that time.”

Colonel Marsden laughed heartily; her diverting words, coming just at that moment, were a relief to both.  The negroes had talked to the child so much about her birth and babyhood, she had come to believe that she remembered them herself.  Every date of late years went back to the time “fo’ Lil Missus wuz born’d,” or the time “sence she was born’d,” or the time “when she was born’d.”  Old Squire especially humored the conceit: