Then there came to be a bargaining about time, and the poor woman begged almost on her knees that she might be allowed to take her child upstairs and be with him alone for a few minutes.  It seemed to her that she had not seen her boy till she had had him to herself, in absolute privacy, till she had kissed his limbs, and had her hand upon his smooth back, and seen that he was white and clean and bright as he had ever been.  And the bargain was made.  She was asked to pledge her word that she would not take him out of the house, and she pledged her word, feeling that there was no strength in her for that action which she had meditated.  He, knowing that he might still guard the passage at the bottom of the stairs, allowed her to go with the boy to his bedroom, while he remained below with Lady Rowley.  A quarter of an hour was allowed to her, and she humbly promised that she would return when that time was expired.

Trevelyan held the door open for her as she went, and kept it open during her absence.  There was hardly a word said between him and Lady Rowley, but he paced from the passage into the room and from the room into the passage with his hands behind his back.  ‘It is cruel,’ he said once.  ‘It is very cruel.’

‘It is you that are cruel,’ said Lady Rowley.

’Of course, of course.  That is natural from you.  I expect that from you.’  To this she made no answer, and he did not open his lips again.

After a while Mrs Trevelyan called to her mother, and Lady Rowley was allowed to go upstairs.  The quarter of an hour was of course greatly stretched, and all the time Trevelyan continued to pace in and out of the room.  He was patient, for he did not summon them; but went on pacing backwards and forwards, looking now and again to see that the cab was at its place, that no deceit was being attempted, no second act of kidnapping being perpetrated.  At last the two ladies came down the stairs, and the boy was with them and the woman of the house.

‘Louis,’ said the wife, going quickly up to her husband, ’I will do anything, if you will give me my child.’

‘What will you do?’

’Anything; say what you want.  He is all the world to me, and I cannot live if he be taken from me.’

‘Acknowledge that you have been wrong.’

‘But how, in what words, how am I to speak it?’

‘Say that you have sinned and that you will sin no more.’

’Sinned, Louis, as the woman did in the Scripture?

‘He cannot think that it is so,’ said Lady Rowley.

But Trevelyan had not understood her.  ’Lady Rowley, I should have fancied that my thoughts at any rate were my own.  But this is useless now.  The child cannot go with you to-day, nor can you remain here.  Go home and think of what I have said.  If then you will do as I would have you, you shall return.’

With many embraces, with promises of motherly love, and with prayers for love in return, the poor woman did at last leave the house, and return to the cab.  As she went there was a doubt on her own mind whether she should ask to kiss her husband; but he made no sign, and she at last passed out without any mark of tenderness.  He stood by the cab as they entered it, and closed the door upon them, and then went slowly back to his room.  ‘My poor bairn,’ he said to the boy; ’my poor bairn.’