But that very circumstance, full of such tender meaning in many cases; threw a new light into her mind.  It changed her from the woman into the mother—­the stern guardian of her child.  She was still for a time, thinking.  Then she began again, but in a low, deep voice.

“He left me.  He might have been hurried off, but he might have inquired—­he might have learned and explained.  He left me to bear the burden and the shame; and never cared to learn, as he might have done, of Leonard’s birth.  He has no love for his child, and I will have no love for him.”

She raised her voice while uttering this determination, and then, feeling her own weakness, she moaned out, “Alas! alas!”

And then she started up, for all this time she had been rocking herself backwards and forwards as she sat on the ground, and began to pace the room with hurried steps.

“What am I thinking of?  Where am I?  I who have been praying these years and years to be worthy to be Leonard’s mother.  My God!  What a depth of sin is in my heart!  Why, the old time would be as white as snow to what it would be now, if I sought him out, and prayed for the explanation, which would re-establish him in my heart.  I who have striven (or made a mock of trying) to learn God’s holy will, in order to bring up Leonard into the full strength of a Christian—­I who have taught his sweet innocent lips to pray, ’Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;’ and yet, somehow, I’ve been longing to give him to his father, who is—­who is”—­she almost choked, till at last she cried sharp out,

“Oh, my God!  I do believe Leonard’s father is a bad man, and yet, oh! pitiful God, I love him; I cannot forget—­I cannot!”

She threw her body half out of the window into the cold night air.  The wind was rising, and came in great gusts.  The rain beat down on her.  It did her good.  A still, calm night would not have soothed her as this did.  The wild tattered clouds, hurrying past the moon, gave her a foolish kind of pleasure that almost made her smile a vacant smile.  The blast-driven rain came on her again, and drenched her hair through and through.  The words “stormy wind fulfilling His word” came into her mind.

She sat down on the floor.  This time her hands were clasped round her knees.  The uneasy rocking motion was stilled.

“I wonder if my darling is frightened with this blustering, noisy wind.  I wonder if he is awake.”

And then her thoughts went back to the various times of old, when, affrighted by the weather—­sounds so mysterious in the night—­he had crept into her bed and clung to her, and she had soothed him, and sweetly awed him into stillness and childlike faith, by telling him of the goodness and power of God.

Of a sudden she crept to a chair, and there knelt as in the very presence of God, hiding her face, at first not speaking a word (for did He not know her heart), but by-and-by moaning out, amid her sobs and tears (and now for the first time she wept)—­