"He, too, was a stranger; and, wandering on the cliffs, had first noted the pale, unquiet woman that haunted them. When he had learned her story from the fisherman, his pity grew to sympathy, and ended in love. He was rich and free; and that night, as she clung gratefully to his arm, it was offered to her, with protection from all care and want and contact with the world. He had come out to seek her, he said, and _that very night_ stood ready to make her his. The priest awaited them; his arms should shelter her; he urged and pleaded with her to become once more a wife. "You must not blame her, children--you must not, at least, judge her too harshly that she listened to _the temptation_, knowing, as she did, that the new vows would be an empty mockery; that all her love was buried fathoms deep with Richard Gray. She still trembled from the insult of the sailors; the night was black and pitiless; she was alone, and almost _starving_. It was like one, benumbed with cold and hunger, standing on the threshold of a mansion blazing with light and warmth and costly cheer. Many a young maiden has bartered her hand for gold without Alice Gray's bitter need, now, even in our own day, or for the baubles of rank and position. "Oh, it was cruel in that kind voice to plead so earnestly, knowing her heart was starved--craving for kindness and care! For her child's sake, he said, and pictured the boy growing up under his fatherly protection, or, skilfully reversing the lines, showed him to her neglected and abandoned among the rude fishermen. No wonder that consent hung on her very utterance, when the child stirred in her bosom, and passed its little hands caressingly over her haggard face as she bent towards it. _Richard's child!_ She could not give another the husband's right he had been proud to claim; no, she would work, ay, starve, if it must be so, but not wrong his memory by falsehood and the endurance of caresses from which she must ever shrink, as the memory of his love came between her and the present. "_Her child_ saved her from the great sin of going to another home and another love that night, when she had nothing to offer in return. "So her last friend was repulsed, and deserted her, trying to keep down the bitterness of spirit that pride called up to take the place of rejected love. She sat alone and hopeless with her child through the midnight darkness, and the love-token sparkled beneath the lamp of the grasping broker, who sat counting the day's gains. "A knock at the outer entrance did not startle him, for he conducted many a shrewd bargain while others slept; but he looked to see that all his treasures were within a sweep of his arm before he admitted the visitor.