For a moment the crouching figure was still, as if the sufferer mentally grasped at some shred of hope; then she fell back on her pillow, and groaned.

“Do you know all I have done?  Do you think there is any mercy for—­”

“Hush, every word taxes your failing strength.  Compose yourself.”

“I can’t!  As long as I have breath let me tell you.  If I shut my eyes, horrible things seem to be pouncing upon me; dreadful shapes laugh, and beckon to me, and I see—­oh! pity me!  I see my murdered child, with the blood spouting, foaming, the velvety brown eyes I loved to kiss, staring and glazed as I dragged his little body to—­”

With a gurgling scream she paused, shivered, panted.

“It is a feverish dream.  Your child is safe in heaven; ask your Father to let you see his face among the angels.”

“It’s not fever; it’s the past, my own crimes that come to follow me to judgment and accuse me.  The hand of my first-born pointing over the last bar at the mother who killed him!  Do you wonder I am afraid to die?  I don’t deny my bloody deeds—­but after all it was a foul wrong that drove me to desperation; and God knows, man’s injustice brought me to my sin.  I was a spoiled, motherless child, married at sixteen to a man whose family despised me, because my pretty face had ruined their scheme of a match with an heiress, whose money was needed to retrieve their fortunes.  They never forgave the marriage, and after a few years, mischief began to brew.

“I loved my husband, but his nature was too austere to deal patiently with my freakish, petulant, volcanic temper; and when he lectured me for my frivolity, obstinacy plunged me into excesses of gayety, that at heart I did not enjoy.  His mother and sister shunned me more and more, poisoned his mind with wicked and unfounded suspicions, and so we grew mutually distrustful.  He tired of me, and he showed it.  I loved him.  Oh!  I loved him better, and better, as I saw him drifting away.  He neglected me, spent his leisure where he met the woman he had once intended to marry.  I was so maddened with jealous heart-ache, some evil spirit prompted me to try and punish him with the same pangs.  That was my first sin of deception; I pretended an attachment I never felt, hoping to rekindle my husband’s affection.  Like many another heart-sick wife, I was caught in my own snare; and while I was as innocent of any wrong as my own baby boy, his father was glad of a pretext to excuse his alienation.  People slandered me; and because I loved Allen so deeply, I was too proud to defend myself, until too late.

“God is my witness, my husband was the only man I ever loved; ah! how dear he was to me!  His very garments were precious; and I have kissed and cried over his gloves, his slippers.  The touch of his hand was worth all the world to me, but he withheld it.  When you know your husband loves you, he may ill treat, may trample you under his feet, but you can forgive him all; you caress the heel that bruises you.  Allen ceased to show me ordinary consideration, stung me with sneers, threatened separation; even shrunk from the boy, because he was mine.