"Oh, madam, it breaks my heart to have you speak so tenderly. I--I am not worthy of it. I am not fit to touch your hand. I--I told you falsely when I said there was no blot upon my little Louis's name. Oh, madam, do not turn away from him! He is innocent though he is--the child of shame!" CHAPTER XXX "NOT WISELY BUT TOO WELL" "Oh, it was pitiful! In the whole city full, Friend she had none." The child of shame! Margaret drew back. She was not prepared for this. Neither was she prepared, when the test came, to take into her home and her life a little waif upon whom this blight had fallen,--so little do we know ourselves. The girl, her understanding quickened by her anguish of mind, saw the gesture and interpreted it aright. "You cast him off!" she cried. "Oh, I knew you would. That is why I told you falsely. I did not mean to tell you the truth--ever. But, oh, madam, when you said that she, this lady, would make him honorable as his father had been--would keep him pure as his mother was pure, and true, as both had proved--I felt that it was a curse I had drawn down upon his helpless head. Then, oh, then, I could not keep back the truth. His father was not honorable nor his mother pure." "Rosalie," said Margaret, calming the girl with the quiet womanliness of her manner, "do you want to tell me your story? Is it this that you have brought me back to hear?" "Yes. Oh, yes! Let me tell it before you judge me. It is for the boy's sake that I lied; it is for his sake that I will speak the truth now. Oh, it is the truth that I will tell you now!" "Go on," said Margaret. "Eight years ago," the sick girl said mournfully, "only eight years, I was little Rosalie Lesseur Beaumont. We were French enough to have the names, though we had always lived in Maryland. My home was in the country. I knew nothing about the city and its wickedness. I was but a child when I met--" she looked up appealingly--"I need not tell you his name?" "No," said Margaret, hastily, "there is no need that I should know." The sick girl threw her a quick glance of gratitude. It is a thing most passing strange that when a woman finds herself betrayed, disgraced, branded with shame and thrust out into that utter darkness from which she knows there can never be recall--even then she holds inviolate the name of him who has brought her low.