“No, no! I did not. In less than an hour, oh! much less, for I was hardly out of the shadow of the trees, I went back, resolved to bear everything, suffer everything, rather than part with it—but the rock was bare; the moonlight lay upon it, cold and white. I searched eagerly, but my child was gone. I sought for it everywhere—in the hollows, among the ferns, in the water. All night I wandered up and down on the shore—but my child was gone. I had left it wrapped up, warm and asleep. No human being was nigh. The rock sloped downward; it had rolled into the water! I thought this—I have always thought it. Oh do not look on me with those searching eyes, Herman. I was mad, wild—driven to desperation—a child-mother fleeing that night from shame and a father’s wrath. “My father had been absent almost a year. He had placed me in a school in New England, which I left, as if for home, but hid myself in New York. When my baby was but a few weeks old I learned that my father was coming home. If I was not there, he would search for me at the school, and learn how long I had been absent. You had left me; I had not heard from you. Consider, I was so young—all alone, a wife, a mother—but without a husband. All this drove me mad. No doubt I was absolutely insane.” Here Mrs. Lambert’s passionate excitement began to exhaust itself. She lifted a hand to her forehead and went on. “I remember, in a vague way, wandering off in search of a river, with the child in my arms, longing to hide myself and it in the water. If I had any purpose, it was to go beyond the reach of my father’s wrath, and take my baby with me.” Here the woman, seized with infinite self-pity, began to moan and weep. “I remember nothing, except that the black water frightened me. I think it was not for myself, but the child. I was wondering if it could be kept dry and warm when I was asleep down there. Then I grew afraid for myself, and fled into the woods to escape the dull, heavy lapping of the water, which both lured and repulsed me. I have told you. It was gone when I came back, gone forever and ever; I had come back, clear in my mind, resolved with half insane courage, to take it in my arms, and tell my father the whole truth. But it was gone. It was gone!” When the woman ceased speaking, Ross knelt by her side, and heavier sobs than hers filled the room. “My poor girl! My wronged young wife! God forgive me the rashness of my youth—the injustice of my manhood!” She lifted her face, radiant under the storm of tears that had passed over it. “You pity me! There is no longer suspicion in your eyes. Sometimes you will perhaps think that I was not all to blame, that in wresting the child from my bosom, God punished me enough. Ah, you did not know how I loved it, how I pined for it! How gladly I would have taken it in my arms and followed you to the ends of the earth!” “Elizabeth, Elizabeth!”