“Can I help you in any way?”
“No. No one can help. It is finished. All is destroyed. Do what I will, all is destroyed.”
The woman must have some strange delusion. I could not see honest Bob Ferguson in the character of fiend or devil.
“Madame,” I said, “Your husband loves you dearly. He is deeply grieved at this happening.”
Again she turned on me those glorious eyes.
“He loves me. Yes. But do I not love him? Do I not love him even to sacrifice myself rather than break his dear heart. That is how I love him. And yet he could think of me—he could speak of me so.”
“He is full of grief, but he cannot understand.”
“No, he cannot understand. But he should trust.”
“Will you not see him?” I suggested.
“No, no; I cannot forget those terrible words nor the look upon his face. I will not see him. Go now. You can do nothing for me. Tell him only one thing. I want my child. I have a right to my child. That is the only message I can send him.” She turned her face to the wall and would say no more.
I returned to the room downstairs, where Ferguson and Holmes still sat by the fire. Ferguson listened moodily to my account of the interview.
“How can I send her the child?” he said. “How do I know what strange impulse might come upon her? How can I ever forget how she rose from beside it with its blood upon her lips?” He shuddered at the recollection. “The child is safe with Mrs. Mason, and there he must remain.”
A smart maid, the only modern thing which we
