Innocent’s deep-set, sad eyes studied her “mother” with strange wistfulness.

“Did you not love him?” she asked, pitifully.

Lady Blythe laughed, lightly.

“You odd girl!  Of course I was quite crazy about him!—­he was so handsome—­and very fascinating in his way—­but he could be a terrible bore, and he had a very bad temper.  I was thankful when we separated.  But I have made my own private enquiries about you, from time to time—­I always had rather a curiosity about you, as I have had no other children.  Won’t you come and kiss me?”

Innocent stood rigid.

“I cannot!” she said.

Lady Blythe flushed and bit her lips.

“As you like!” she said, airily—­“I don’t mind!”

The girl clasped her hands tightly together.

“How can you ask me!” she said, in low, thrilling tones—­“You who have let me grow up without any knowledge of you!—­you who had no shame in leaving me here to live on the charity of a stranger!—­ you who never cared at all for the child you brought into the world!—­can you imagine that I could care—­now?”

“Well, really,” smiled Lady Blythe—­“I’m not sure that I have asked you to care!  I have simply come here to tell you that you are not entirely alone in the world, and that I, knowing myself to be your mother—­(although it happened so long ago I can hardly believe I was ever such a fool!)—­am willing to do something for you—­especially as I have no children by my second marriage.  I will, in fact, ‘adopt’ you!” and she laughed—­a pretty, musical laugh like a chime of little silver bells.  “Lord Blythe will be delighted—­he’s a kind old person!”

Innocent looked at her gravely and steadily.

“Do you mean to say that you will own me?—­name me?—­acknowledge me as your daughter—­”

“Why, certainly not!” and Lady Blythe’s eyes flashed over her in cold disdain—­“What are you thinking of?  You are not legitimate—­ and you really have no lawful name—­besides, I’m not bound to do anything at all for you now you are old enough to earn your own living.  But I’m quite a good-natured woman,—­and as I have said already I have no other children—­and I’m willing to ‘adopt’ you, bring you out in society, give you pretty clothes, and marry you well if I can.  But to own that I ever made such an idiot of myself as to have you at all is a little too much to ask!—­Lord Blythe would never forgive me!”

“So you would make me live a life of deception with you!” said Innocent—­“You would make me pretend to be what I am not—­just as you pretend to be what you are not!—­and yet you say I am your child!  Oh God, save me from such a mother!  Madam”—­and she spoke in cold, deliberate accents—­“you have lived all these years without children, save me whom you have ignored—­and I, though nameless and illegitimate, now ignore you!  I have no mother!  I would not own you any more than you would own me;—­my shame in saying that such a woman is my mother would be greater than yours in saying that I am your child!  For the stigma of my birth is not my fault, but yours!—­I am, as my father called me—­’innocent’!”