"I do not wonder when I meet with this judgment in the world or in you. I only wondered when I found in your son a being too high for it--a being to whom right is right and pureness is pureness, as it is to God. You will remember, madame, that it was your son who claimed that I was not debarred from honorable marriage, and not I. Oh, I have suffered--you were right. No wonder that the sign of it is branded on my forehead for all the world to see. I have suffered in a way as far beyond the worst pain you have ever known as that pain of yours has been from pleasure. You have known death in its most awful form when it took from you your dearest ones, but I have known death too. My little baby, who was like the very core of my heart, round which the heartstrings twisted, and the clinging flesh was wrapped, was torn away from me by death, and it was pain and anguish unspeakable--but I have known a suffering compared to which that agony was joy. There can be worse things to bear than the death of your heart's dearest treasure--at least I know it may be so with women. And it was because you were a woman, with a woman's possibilities of pain, that I wanted to come to you--to tell you all, and let you say whether I am a fit wife for your son." Ah, poor Christine! She felt, as she spoke those words, the silent, still, impalpable recoil in her companion's heart. She knew the poor woman was trying to be kind and merciful and sympathetic, but she also knew that what she had just said had rendered Noel's mother the foe and opposer of this marriage, instead of its friend. "Go on, tell me all," his mother said, and that subtle change of voice and manner was distincter still to the acute consciousness of Christine's suffering soul. "I will be your friend whatever happens, and I honor you for the spirit in which you look upon this thing. I will speak out boldly, though you know I dislike to give you pain. But tell me this: Do you think yourself a fit wife for my son?" Christine raised her head and answered with a very noble look of pride: "I do." Her companion seemed to be surprised, and a faint shade of disapproval crossed her face. "I know it," said Christine. "I know he did not say too much when he spoke those blessed words to you and said I was stainless. God saw my heart through everything and He knows that it is so, but the world thinks otherwise. The world, and his own family, perhaps, would think your son lowered and dishonored by marrying me, and I never could consent to go among the people who could think it; so, if he married me, he would not only have to bear this odium, but to give up too, forever, his home and relatives, and friends and country, and it was for these reasons I refused to marry him--not for an instant because I felt myself unworthy." It was plain that these earnest words had moved her companion deeply, and that she felt a desire to hear more.