“My daughter, my darling, let all my love for you plead vehemently in my defence, when I tell you that for your dear sake I made a desperate, an awful, a sickening resolve.  General Laurance was infatuated by my beauty, which has been as fatal to his house as his name to me.  Like many handsome old men, he was inordinately vain, and imagined himself irresistible; and when he persecuted me with attentions that might have compromised a woman less prudent and prudish than I bore myself, I determined to force him to an offer of his hand, to marry him.”

With a sharp cry Regina sprang up.

“Mother, not him!  Not my father’s father!”

“Yes, Rene Laurance, my husband’s father.”

With a gesture of horror the girl groaned and covered her white convulsed face.

“Mother!  Could my mother commit such a loathsome, awful crime against God, and nature?”

“It was for your sake, my darling!” cried Mrs. Orme, wringing her hands, as she saw the shudder with which her child repulsed her.

“For my sake that you stained you dear pure hands!  For my sake that you steeped your soul in guilt that even brutal savages abhor, and loaded your name and memory with infamy!  In his desertion my father sinned against me, and freely because he is my father I could forgive him; but you, the immaculate mother of my lifelong worship, you who have reigned white-souled and angelic over all my hopes, my aspirations, my love and reverence, oh, mother! mother, you have doubly wronged me!  The disgrace of your unnatural and heinous crime I can never, never pardon!”

With averted head she stood apart, a pitiable picture of misery, that could find no adequate expression.

“My baby, my love, my precious daughter!”

Ah the pleading pathos of that marvellous voice which had swayed at will the emotions of vast audiences, as soft fitful zephyrs stir and bow the tender grasses in quiet meadows!  Slowly the girl turned around, and reluctantly looked at the beloved beautiful face, tearful yet smiling, beaming with such passionate tenderness upon her.

Mrs. Orme opened her arms, and Regina sprang forward, sinking on her knees at her mother’s feet, clinging to her dress.

“You could not smile upon me so, with that sin soiling your soul!  Oh, mother, say you did it not!”

“God had mercy, and saved me from it.”

“Let us praise and serve Him for ever, in thanksgiving,” sobbed the daughter.

“I see now that my punishment would have been unendurable, for I should have lost the one true, pure heart that clings to me.  How do mothers face their retribution, I wonder, when they disgrace their innocent little ones, and see shame and horror and aversion in the soft faces that slept upon their bosoms, and once looked in adoration at the heaven of their eyes?  Even in this life the pangs of the lost must seize all such.