"Yes, your son would know if he were here; he has taken my parole and trusted me," said the strange woman; "but a woman's parole should not be taken. I try to keep it; but unless they come, or I have news---- Who am I? I am a woman that was once young and had friends. They married me to a man, who was not a man, but a fine organisation capable of pleasures and cruelties. Don't speak. You are very good; you are a minister's wife. You don't know what it is, when one is young and happy, to find out all at once that life means only so much torture and misery, and so many lies, either done by you or borne by you--what does it matter which? My baby came into the world with a haze on her sweet soul because of that discovery. If it had been but her body!" said Mrs. Vincent's strange companion, with bitterness. "A dwarfed creature, or deformed, or---- But she was beautiful--she is beautiful, as pretty as Alice; and if she lives, she will be rich. Hush, hush! you don't know what my fears were," continued Mrs. Hilyard, with a strange humility, once more putting her hand on the widow's arm. "If he could have got possession of her, how could I tell what he might have done?--killed her--but that would have been dangerous; poisoned what little mind she had left--made her like her mother. I stole her away. Long ago, when I thought she might have been safe with you, I meant to have told you. I stole her out of his power. For a little while she was with me, and he traced us--then I sent the child away. I have not seen her but in glimpses, lest he should find her. It has cost me all I had, and I have lived and worked with my hands," said the needlewoman of Back Grove Street, lifting her thin fingers to the light and looking at them, pathetic vouchers to the truth of her story. "When he drove me desperate," she went on, labouring in vain to conceal the panting, long-drawn breath which impeded her utterance, "you know? I don't talk of that. The child put her arms round that old woman after her mother had saved her. She had not a word, not a word for me, who had done---- But it was all for her sake. This is what I have had to suffer. She looked in my face and waved me away from her and said, 'Susan, Susan!' Susan meant your daughter--a new friend, a creature whom she had not seen a week before--and no word, no look, no recognition for me!" "Oh, I am very sorry, very sorry!" said Mrs. Vincent, in her turn taking the poor thin hand with an instinct of consolation. Susan's name, thus introduced, went to the mother's heart. She could have wept over the other mother thus complaining, moaning out her troubles in her compassionate ear.