She did not know how long she sat thus silent, with a thousand thoughts passing through her mind. She was not thinking; she was stunned, and incapable of any mental action. Her thoughts came and went independently, presenting their arguments before her like so many unseen pleaders. Little Margaret slid from her arms to the floor, and sat there playing with anything that came to hand, gurgling with sweet rills of laughter, sweet murmurs, and those attempts at words which mothers know how to translate. But she took no notice. Slowly the invisible advocates delivered their pleas, and set forth all their reasonings. There rose before her a vision of what must be done, of what it was impossible to do. She was his wife; she had counted the cost and taken the risk, and now the forfeit was required of her. The time had been when she was little Margaret’s mother before all; but she had willingly, consciously, taken up another responsibility. She was his wife. Life must be transformed, must be so arranged that it should be practicable with him and not another. Isabel took the baby up from the floor and pressed it to her heart with a despair which could find no words. Thus it must be. She had drawn her lot with her eyes open, knowing she must pay some hard price for it, though not this price. The decision to be made was so bitter and so terrible that it quenched down even her impetuous, passionate nature. She could not be angry as she would have been had the occasion been less trivial. She was beyond anger. There was in her whole being the silence of despair. The whole day passed over her in a hush like that which comes before a storm. She framed the softest message she could, and sent Eelin back with it, declaring that it was impossible she could come. And she occupied her mind with schemes for her baby’s comfort, and for keeping some trace of her own recollection before the child when they should be parted, perhaps for ever and ever. For ever and ever--that was most likely--with the great ocean between them, and life more bitter than any ocean. Jean would be good to the child she knew, and Miss Catherine would keep a watchful eye on her--and---- Only the mother would have no part--no part in little Margaret’s life. She could not shed any more tears, they were all dried up, scorched up out of her eyes; but she sat all day by herself, and thought, and thought. Yes, this was how it must be. Her own life was decided and settled by her own deed; and Isabel would not say even to herself what a prospect she felt to be before her. But to expose Margaret to the hatred of the man who ought to stand to her in the place of a father, to make her little life subject to such storms, to give her no happy home, full of love and tender freedom, but a nook on suffrance in the house of ‘another family’--better let the mother’s heart break once for all, and the child be happy, caressed, above all criticism. Thus it must be.