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I found such an insufficiency in this statement of feeling that I wanted to laugh, but I perceived that it did not appeal to my wife’s sense of humor. She said, “I can understand how you feel about it, Mrs. Hasketh.”

Mrs. Hasketh seemed grateful for the sympathy. “I presume,” she went on, and I noted how often she used the quaint old-fashioned Yankee word, “that you feel as if you had almost as much right to hate him as I had, and that if you could overlook what he tried to do to you, I might overlook what he did do to his own family. But as I see it, the case is different. He failed when he tried to put the blame on Mr. March, and he succeeded only too well in putting the shame on his own family. You could forgive it, and it would be all the more to your credit because you forgave it, but his family might have forgiven it ten times over, and still they would be in disgrace through him. That is the way I looked at it.”

“And I assure you, Mrs. Hasketh, that is the way I looked at it, too,” said my wife.

“So, when it seems hard that I should have taken his child from him,” the woman continued, as if still arguing her case, and she probably was arguing it with herself, “and did what I could to make her forget him, I think it had better be considered whose sake I was doing it for, and whether I had any right to do different. I did not think I had at the time, or when I had to begin to act. I knew how I felt toward Mr. Tedham; I never liked him; I never wanted my sister to marry him; and when his trouble came, I told Mr. Hasketh that it was no more than I had expected all along. He was that kind of a man, and he was sure to show it, one way or other, sooner or later; and I was not disappointed when he did what he did. I had to guard against my own feeling, and to put myself out of the question, and that was what I tried to do when I got him to give up the child to us and let her take our name. It was the same as a legal adoption, and he freely consented to it, or as freely as he could, considering where he was. But he knew it was for her good as well as we did. There was nobody for her to look to but us, and he knew that; his own family had no means, and, in fact, he had no family but his father and mother, and when they died, that same first year, there was no one left to suffer from him but his child. The question was how much she ought to be allowed to suffer, and whether she should be allowed to suffer at all, if it could be helped. If it was to be prevented, it was to be by deadening her to him, by killing out her affection for him, and much as I hated Mr. Tedham, I could not bring myself to do that, though I used to think I would do it. He was very fond of her, I don’t deny that; I don’t think it was any merit in him to love such a child, but it was the best thing about him, and I was willing it should count. But then there was another thing that I couldn’t bring myself to, and that was to tell the child, up and down, all about it; and I presume that there I was weak. Well, you may say I was weak! But I couldn’t, I simply couldn’t. She was only between seven and eight when it happened–“