I may as well inform my reader that, as far as Catherine could give an account of the transaction, this conjecture was corroborated.  But the smallest reminder of it evidently filled her with such a horror of self-loathing, that I took care to avoid the subject entirely, after the attempt at explanation which she made at my request.  She could not remember with any clearness what had happened.  All she remembered was that she had been more miserable than ever in her life before; that the child had come to her, as he seldom did, with some childish request or other; that she felt herself seized with intense hatred of him; and the next thing she knew was that his blood was running in a long red finger towards her.  Then it seemed as if that blood had been drawn from her own over-charged heart and brain; she knew what she had done, though she did not know how she had done it; and the tide of her ebbed affection flowed like the returning waters of the Solway.  But beyond her restored love, she remembered nothing more that happened till she lay weeping with the hope that the child would yet live.  Probably more particulars returned afterwards, but I took care to ask no more questions.  In the increase of illness that followed, I more than once saw her shudder while she slept, and thought she was dreaming what her waking memory had forgotten; and once she started awake, crying, “I have murdered him again.”

To return to that first evening:—­When Thomas came from his daughter’s room, he looked like a man from whom the bitterness of evil had passed away.  To human eyes, at least, it seemed as if self had been utterly slain in him.  His face had that child-like expression in its paleness, and the tearfulness without tears haunting his eyes, which reminds one of the feeling of an evening in summer between which and the sultry day preceding it has fallen the gauzy veil of a cooling shower, with a rainbow in the east.

“She is asleep,” he said.

“How is it your daughter Mary is not here?” I asked.

“She was taken with a fit the moment she heard the bad news, sir.  I left her with nobody but father.  I think I must go and look after her now.  It’s not the first she’s had neither, though I never told any one before.  You won’t mention it, sir.  It makes people look shy at you, you know, sir.”

“Indeed, I won’t mention it.—­Then she mustn’t sit up, and two nurses will be wanted here.  You and I must take it to-night, Thomas.  You’ll attend to your daughter, if she wants anything, and I know this little darling won’t be frightened if he comes to himself, and sees me beside him.”

“God bless you, sir,” said Thomas, fervently.

And from that hour to this there has never been a coolness between us.

“A very good arrangement,” said Dr Duncan; “only I feel as if I ought to have a share in it.”

“No, no,” I said.  “We do not know who may want you.  Besides, we are both younger than you.”