’One night when that miserable girl had just arrived home with her parents from Germany, where her baby had been born, she took all the money she possessed, pinned it on her infant’s bosom, together with a letter, stating, among other things, what she wished the child’s Christian name to be; wrapped up the little thing, and walked with it to Clapham.  Here, in a retired street, she selected a house.  She placed the child on the doorstep and knocked at the door, then ran away and watched.  They took it up and carried it indoors.

’Now that her poor baby was gone, the girl blamed herself bitterly for cruelty towards it, and wished she had adopted her parents’ counsel to secretly hire a nurse.  She longed to see it.  She didn’t know what to do.  She wrote in an assumed name to the woman who had taken it in, and asked her to meet the writer with the infant at certain places she named.  These were hotels or coffee-houses in Chelsea, Pimlico, or Hammersmith.  The woman, being well paid, always came, and asked no questions.  At one meeting—­at an inn in Hammersmith—­she made her appearance without the child, and told the girl it was so ill that it would not live through the night.  The news, and fatigue, brought on a fainting-fit . . .’

Miss Aldclyffe’s sobs choked her utterance, and she became painfully agitated.  Cytherea, pale and amazed at what she heard, wept for her, bent over her, and begged her not to go on speaking.

‘Yes—­I must,’ she cried, between her sobs.  ’I will—­I must go on!  And I must tell yet more plainly! . . . you must hear it before I am gone, Cytherea.’  The sympathizing and astonished girl sat down again.

’The name of the woman who had taken the child was Manston.  She was the widow of a schoolmaster.  She said she had adopted the child of a relation.

’Only one man ever found out who the mother was.  He was the keeper of the inn in which she fainted, and his silence she has purchased ever since.

’A twelvemonth passed—­fifteen months—­and the saddened girl met a man at her father’s house named Graye—­your father, Cytherea, then unmarried.  Ah, such a man!  Inexperience now perceived what it was to be loved in spirit and in truth!  But it was too late.  Had he known her secret he would have cast her out.  She withdrew from him by an effort, and pined.

’Years and years afterwards, when she became mistress of a fortune and estates by her father’s death, she formed the weak scheme of having near her the son whom, in her father’s life-time, she had been forbidden to recognize.  Cytherea, you know who that weak woman is.

* * * * *

’By such toilsome labour as this I got him here as my steward.  And I wanted to see him your husband, Cytherea!—­the husband of my true lover’s child.  It was a sweet dream to me. . . .  Pity me—­O, pity me!  To die unloved is more than I can bear!  I loved your father, and I love him now.’