The Legacy of Cain

"In that case, I shall hope to forget that you ever favored me with a visit."

In making this reply I was guiltless of any malicious intention. What evil interpretation she placed on my words it is impossible for me to say; I can only declare that some intolerable sense of injury hurried her into an outbreak of rage. Her voice, strained for the first time, lost its tuneful beauty of tone.

"Come and see us in two years' time," she burst out—"and discover the orphan of the gallows in our house if you can! If your Asylum won't take her, some other Charity will. Ha, Mr. Governor, I deserve my disappointment! I ought to have remembered that you are only a jailer after all. And what is a jailer? Proverbially a brute. Do you hear that? A brute!"

Her strength suddenly failed her. She dropped back into the chair from which she had risen, with a faint cry of pain. A ghastly pallor stole over her face. There was wine on the sideboard; I filled a glass. She refused to take it. At that time in the day, the Doctor's duties required his attendance in the prison. I instantly sent for him. After a moment's look at her, he took the wine out of my hand, and held the glass to her lips.

"Drink it," he said. She still refused. "Drink it," he reiterated, "or you will die."

That frightened her; she drank the wine. The Doctor waited for a while with his fingers on her pulse. "She will do now," he said.

"Can I go?" she asked.

"Go wherever you please, madam—so long as you don't go upstairs in a hurry."

She smiled: "I understand you, sir—and thank you for your advice."

I asked the Doctor, when we were alone, what made him tell her not to go upstairs in a hurry.

"What I felt," he answered, "when I had my fingers on her pulse. You heard her say that she understood me."

"Yes; but I don't know what she meant."

"She meant, probably, that her own doctor had warned her as I did."

"Something seriously wrong with her health?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"Heart."

CHAPTER X. MISS CHANCE REAPPEARS.

A week had passed, since the Minister's wife had left me, when I received a letter from the Minister himself.

After surprising me, as he innocently supposed, by announcing the birth of his child, he mentioned some circumstances connected with that event, which I now heard for the first time.

"Within an easy journey of the populous scene of my present labors," he wrote, "there is a secluded country village called Low Lanes. The rector of the place is my wife's brother. Before the birth of our infant, he had asked his sister to stay for a while at his house; and the doctor thought she might safely be allowed to accept the invitation. Through some error in the customary calculations, as I suppose, the child was born unexpectedly at the rectory; and the ceremony of baptism was performed at the church, under circumstances which I am not able to relate within the limits of a letter: Let me only say that I allude to this incident without any sectarian bitterness of feeling—for I am no enemy to the Church of England. You have no idea what treasures of virtue and treasures of beauty maternity has revealed in my wife's sweet nature. Other mothers, in her proud position, might find their love cooling toward the poor child whom we have adopted. But my household is irradiated by the presence of an angel, who gives an equal share in her affections to the two little ones alike."

In this semi-hysterical style of writing, the poor man unconsciously told me how cunningly and how cruelly his wife was deceiving him.

I longed to exhibit that wicked woman in her true character—but what could I do? She must have been so favored by circumstances as to be able to account for her absence from home, without exciting the slightest suspicion of the journey which she had really taken, if I declared in my reply to the Minister's letter that I had received her in my rooms, and if I repeated the conversation that had taken place, what would the result be? She would find an easy refuge in positive denial of the truth—and, in that case, which of us would her infatuated husband believe?

The one part of the letter which I read with some satisfaction was the end of it.

I was here informed that the Minister's plans for concealing the parentage of his adopted daughter had proved to be entirely successful. The members of the new domestic household believed the two children to be infant-sisters. Neither was there any danger of the adopted child being identified (as the oldest child of the two) by consultation of the registers.