"All this I told Mrs. Meredith, and a great deal besides, for I was still in the first violence of bitter, self-reproachful grief. I wanted to be rid of the child, the cause of the catastrophe, whom I hated as vehemently as I had loved its mother, and I begged Mrs. Meredith to help me to dispose of it in such a fashion that, to me at least, the little one should be to all intents and purposes as dead as she was. Babies, I knew, had not a very strong hold on life, and I hoped, as a matter of fact, that it might really die, but this I did not dare to say aloud. Mrs. Meredith was kind to me. I remember well how good and sympathetic she was. She had heard most of the story from Juliana, whose friend she was, and it was at her house that the child was born. We had confided in no one else. She sat silently for a while after I had finished what I had to say, till at last she turned to me and tried to persuade me to alter my intention of disowning the baby. But I repeated doggedly that unless she had some alternative way to suggest of getting rid of it, I meant to leave the little girl at the door of one of the foundling hospitals, and that I would take her that very night. "At length, seeing that I was resolved, she said she thought she could manage better than that. She had a friend, she said, an elderly Russian lady, who was a widow and childless. This lady was anxious to adopt a little English girl, and had lately written to ask her to find her a baby whom she could bring up as her own child. There was no reason why Juliana's baby should not be the one. She would write at once and suggest it. I was greatly relieved at this idea. Although I had been determined to do as I proposed, whatever opposition I might meet with, my conscience had not been willing to let me leave my child on a doorstep without protesting, and, little though I heeded its condemnation, I was glad to be able to get my own way and at the same time to silence the voice of my inward critic. "The plan seemed simplicity itself. My wife, as I have told you, had no parents living. Her brothers and sisters, who were all married and living in different parts of the country, had been led to believe that her death was the result of an accident. Mrs. Meredith had even managed to prevail on the doctor to lend himself to this fiction; for, my grandfather being yet alive, there was still every reason not to declare our marriage, while there seemed to be none in favour of doing so, and I shrank from the questionings and scenes which publicity now would not fail to bring upon me. Before I left Mrs. Meredith we had agreed that she should at once communicate with her Russian friend, whose name I refused to let her tell me.