“Martha! and you did not come to me?”

“I did not dare.  Listen, Lucia.  If a woman who had always gratified her love of admiration, and gloried in the power of gratifying it—­who conquered men and loved to conquer them—­who was a woman of ungoverned will and indomitable pride, should encounter—­as how often they do?—­a man who utterly conquered her, and betrayed her through the very weakness that springs from pride, do you not see that such a woman would go near to insanity—­as I have been—­believing that I had committed the unpardonable sin, and that no punishment could be painful enough?”

Mrs. Bennet looked alarmed.

“No, no; there is no reason,” said her sister, observing it.

“The man came.  I could not resist him.  There was a form of marriage.  I believed that it was I who had conquered.  He left me; my child was born.  I appealed to Lawrence Newt, our old friend and playmate.  He promised me faithful secrecy, and through him the child was sent where Gabriel was at school.  Then I withdrew from both.  I thought it was the will of God.  I felt myself commanded to a living death—­dead to every friend and kinsman—­dead to every thing but my degradation and its punishment; and yet consciously close to you, near to all old haunts and familiar faces—­lost to them all—­lost to my child—­” Her voice faltered, and the tears gushed from her eyes.  “But I persevered.  The old passionate pride was changed to a kind of religious frenzy.  Lawrence Newt went and came to and from India.  I was utterly lost to the world.  I knew that my child would never know me, for Lawrence had promised that he would not betray me; and when I disappeared from his view, Lawrence gradually came to consider me dead.  Then Amy discovered me among the poor souls she visited, and through Amy Lawrence Newt; and by them I have been led out of the valley of the shadow of death, and see the blessed light of love once more.”

She bowed her head in uncontrollable emotion.

“And your son?” said her sister, half-smiling through her sympathetic tears.

“Will be yours also, Amy tells me,” said Aunt Martha.  “Thank God! thank God!”

“Martha, who gave him his name?” asked Mrs. Bennet.

Aunt Martha paused for a little while.  Then she said: 

“You never knew who my—­my—­husband was?”

“Never.”

“I remember—­he never came to the house.  Well, I gave my child almost his father’s name.  I called him Wynne; his father’s name was Wayne.”

Mrs. Bennet clasped her hands in her lap.

“How wonderful! how wonderful!” was all she said.

Lawrence Newt knocked at the door, and Amy and he came in.  There was so sweet and strange a light upon Amy’s face that Mrs. Bennet looked at her in surprise.  Then she looked at Lawrence Newt; and he cheerfully returned her glance with that smiling, musing expression in his eyes that was utterly bewildering to Mrs. Bennet.  She could only look at each of the persons before her, and repeat her last words: