Pagina 437 van 896

"I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the

unborn child from whom I had been rent. Whether it was alive.

Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother's shock had

killed it. Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his

father. (There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for

vengeance was unbearable.) Whether it was a son who would never

know his father's story; who might even live to weigh the

possibility of his father's having disappeared of his own will

and act. Whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman."

She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand.

"I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful

of me--rather, altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me.

I have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen

her married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have

altogether perished from the remembrance of the living, and in

the next generation my place was a blank."