When Mr. Greatorex returned to his wife’s room, and thought to find her asleep as he had left her, he was dismayed to hear sounds of soft weeping from the bed. Some tone or stray word, never intended to reach her ear, had been enough to reveal the truth concerning her baby.
“Hush! hush!” he said, with more love in his heart than had moved there for many months, and therefore more in his tone than she had heard for as many;—“if you cry you will be ill. Hush, my dear!”
In a moment, ere he could prevent her, she had flung her arms around his neck as he stooped over her.
“Husband! husband!” she cried, “is it my fault?”
“You behaved perfectly,” he returned. “No woman could have been braver.”
“Ah, but I wouldn’t stay at home when you wanted me.”
“Never mind that now, my child,” he said.
At the word she pulled his face down to hers.
“I have you , and I don’t care,” he added.
“ Do you care to have me?” she said, with a sob that ended in a loud cry. “Oh! I don’t deserve it. But I will be good after this. I promise you I will.”
“Then you must begin now, my darling. You must lie perfectly still, and not cry a bit, or you will go after the baby, and I shall be left alone.”
She looked up at him with such a light in her face as he had never dreamed of there before. He had never seen her so lovely. Then she withdrew her arms, repressed her tears, smiled, and turned her face away.