She would have embraced this proposition with alacrity if it had not become very vivid to her while she stood there, in the midst of her shrinking, that behind those sullen walls the mother who bore him was even then counting the minutes. She was alive, in that huge, dark tomb, and it seemed to Miss Pynsent that they had already entered into relation with her. They were near her, and she knew it; in a few minutes she would taste the cup of the only mercy (except the reprieve from hanging!) she had known since her fall. A few, a very few minutes would do it, and it seemed to Miss Pynsent that if she should fail of her charity now the watches of the night, in Lomax Place, would be haunted with remorse—perhaps even with something worse. There was something inside that waited and listened, something that would burst, with an awful sound, a shriek, or a curse, if she were to lead the boy away. She looked into his pale face for a moment, perfectly conscious that it would be vain for her to take the tone of command; besides, that would have seemed to her shocking. She had another inspiration, and she said to him in a manner in which she had had occasion to speak before— “The reason why we have come is only to be kind. If we are kind we shan’t mind its being disagreeable.” “Why should we be kind, if she’s a bad woman?” Hyacinth inquired. “She must be very low; I don’t want to know her.” “Hush, hush,” groaned poor Amanda, edging toward him with clasped hands. “She is not bad now; it has all been washed away—it has been expiated.” “What’s expiated?” asked the child, while she almost kneeled down in the dust, catching him to her bosom. “It’s when you have suffered terribly—suffered so much that it has made you good again.” “Has _she_ suffered very much?” “For years and years. And now she is dying. It proves she is very good now, that she should want to see us.” “Do you mean because _we_ are good?” Hyacinth went on, probing the matter in a way that made his companion quiver, and gazing away from her, very seriously, across the river, at the dreary waste of Battersea. “We shall be good if we are pitiful, if we make an effort,” said the dressmaker, seeming to look up at him rather than down. “But if she is dying? I don’t want to see any one die.” Miss Pynsent was bewildered, but she rejoined, desperately, “If we go to her, perhaps she won’t. Maybe we shall save her.” He transferred his remarkable little eyes—eyes which always appeared to her to belong to a person older than herself, to her face; and then he inquired, “Why should I save her, if I don’t like her?” “If she likes you, that will be enough.” At this Miss Pynsent began to see that he was moved. “Will she like me very much?” “More, much more than any one.” “More than you, now?” “Oh,” said Amanda quickly, “I mean more than she likes any one.”