"I will tell you then, Geoffrey Ludlow," she said, in a more deliberate tone than she had yet commanded,--"I care nothing for the child! Ay, look at me with abhorrence now; so much the better for _you_, and not a jot the worse for me. What is your abhorrence to me?--what was your love? There are women to whom their children are all in all. I am not of their number; I never could have been. They are not women who love as I love. Where a child has power to sway and fill a woman's heart, to shake her resolution, and determine her life, love is not supreme. There is a proper and virtuous resemblance to it, no doubt, but not love--no, no, not love. I tell you I care nothing for the child. Geoffrey Ludlow, if I had loved you, I should have cared for him almost as little; if the man I love had been his father, I should have cared for him no more, if I know any thing of myself. The child does not need me. I suppose I am not without the brute instinct which would lead me to shelter and feed and clothe him, if he did; but what has he ever needed from me? If I could say without a lie that any thought of him weighs with me--but I cannot--I would say to you, for the child's sake, if for no other reason, I must go. The child is the last and feeblest argument you can use with me--with whom indeed there are none strong or availing." She turned abruptly, and once more laid her hand upon the door-handle. Her last words had roused Geoffrey from the inaction caused by his amazement. As she coldly and deliberately avowed her indifference to the child, furious anger once more awoke within him. He strode hastily towards her and sternly grasped her by the left arm. She made a momentary effort to shake off his hold; but he held her firmly at arm's-length from him, and said through his closed teeth: "You are a base and unnatural woman--more base and unnatural than I believed any woman could be. As for me, I can keep silence on your conduct to myself; perhaps I deserved it, seeing where and how I found you." She started and winced. "As for the child, he is better motherless than with such a mother; but I took you from shame and sin, when I found you in the street, and married you; and you shall not return to them if any effort of mine can prevent it. You have no feeling, you have no conscience, you have no pride; you glory in a passion for a man who flung you away to starve! Woman, have you no sense of decency left, that you can talk of resuming your life of infamy and shame?"