There was but one way of doing it, and that was—­with the full and solemn consciousness that it was and must be a barrier between us for ever.  If I could give her up fully and altogether, then I might tell her the truth which was to preserve her from marrying such a man as my rival.  And I must do so, sooner than that she, my very dream of purity and gentle truth, should wed defilement.  But how bitter to cast away my chance! as I said, in the gathering despair of that black night.  And although every time I said it—­for the same words would come over and over as in a delirious dream—­I repeated yet again to myself that wonderful line of Spenser,—­

“It chanced—­eternal God that chance did guide,”

yet the words never grew into spirit in me; they remained “words, words, words,” and meant nothing to my feeling—­hardly even to my judgment meant anything at all.  Then came another bitter thought, the bitterness of which was wicked:  it flashed upon me that my own earnestness with Catherine Weir, in urging her to the duty of forgiveness, would bear a main part in wrapping up in secrecy that evil thing which ought not to be hid.  For had she not vowed—­with the same facts before her which now threatened to crush my heart into a lump of clay—­to denounce the man at the very altar?  Had not the revenge which I had ignorantly combated been my best ally?  And for one brief, black, wicked moment I repented that I had acted as I had acted.  The next I was on my knees by the side of the sleeping child, and had repented back again in shame and sorrow.  Then came the consolation that if I suffered hereby, I suffered from doing my duty.  And that was well.

Scarcely had I seated myself again by the fire when the door of the room opened softly, and Thomas appeared.

“Kate is very strange, sir,” he said, “and wants to see you.”

I rose at once.

“Perhaps, then, you had better stay with Gerard.”

“I will, sir; for I think she wants to speak to you alone.”

I entered her chamber.  A candle stood on a chest of drawers, and its light fell on her face, once more flushed in those two spots with the glow of the unseen fire of disease.  Her eyes, too, glittered again, but the fierceness was gone, and only the suffering remained.  I drew a chair beside her, and took her hand.  She yielded it willingly, even returned the pressure of kindness which I offered to the thin trembling fingers.

“You are too good, sir,” she said.  “I want to tell you all.  He promised to marry me, I believed him.  But I did very wrong.  And I have been a bad mother, for I could not keep from seeing his face in Gerard’s.  Gerard was the name he told me to call him when I had to write to him, and so I named the little darling Gerard.  How is he, sir?”

“Doing nicely,” I replied.  “I do not think you need be at all uneasy about him now.”