"Here is another of the holy martyrs."

I awoke from that dream with beads of perspiration on my forehead. But I dare not say what confused and terrible thoughts came next, except that they were about baby--what I might do myself if driven to the last extremity. When I slept and dreamt again, it was I who was dead, and it was my darling mother who met me and took me to the feet of the Blessed Virgin and said:

"Mother of all Mothers, who knows all that is in a mother's heart, this is my little daughter. She did not intend to do wrong. It was all for the sake of her child."

When I awoke in the morning, with the darkness shivering off through the gloom, this last dream was sitting upon me like a nightmare. It terrified me. I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a precipice and some awful forces were trying to push me over it.

The London sparrows were chirping on the skylight over my head, and I could faintly hear the Italian criers in the front street:

"Latte!" "Spazzina!" "Erbaggi freschi!"

In spite of myself (hating myself for it after all the tenderness that had been shown me), I could not overcome a feeling of shame at finding myself lying where I was, and I got up to run away that I might cleanse my soul of the evil thoughts which had come to me while there.

As I dressed I listened for a sound from the adjoining room. All was quiet now. The poor restless ones were at last getting a little rest.

A few minutes afterwards I passed on tiptoe through their room without looking towards the bed, and reaching the door to the staircase I opened it as noiselessly as I could.

Then I closed it softly after me, on so much suffering and so much love.

ONE HUNDRED AND SECOND CHAPTER

The sun was shining in the street. It was one of those clear, clean, frosty mornings when the very air of London, even in the worst places, seems to be washed by the sunlight from the sin and drink of the night before.

I was on my way to that church among the mews of Mayfair to which I had gone so frequently during the early days of my marriage when I was struggling against the mortal sin (as I thought it was) of loving Martin.

Just as I reached the church and was ascending the steps, a gorgeous landau with high-stepping horses and a powdered footman drew up at the bottom of them.

The carriage, which bore a coronet on the door, contained a lady in long furs, a rosy-faced baby-girl in squirrel skins with a large doll in her arms, and a nurse.

I could see that, like myself, the lady (a young mother) had come to confess, for as she rose from her seat she told the child to sit quiet and be good and she would not keep her long.

"Tum out soon, mummy, and dolly will lub you eber and eber," said the child.

The lady stooped and kissed the little one, and then, with a proud and happy look, stepped out of the carriage and passed into the church, while the door-keeper opened the vestibule door for her and bowed deeply.

I stood at the top of the steps for a moment looking back at the carriage, the horses, the footman, the nurse, and, above all, the baby-girl with her doll, and then followed the lady into the church.

Apparently mass was just over. Little spirelets of smoke were rising from the candles on the altar which the sacristan was putting out, a few communicants were still on their knees, and others with light yet echoing footsteps were making for the door.

The lady in furs had already taken her place at one of the confessional boxes, and as there seemed to be no other that was occupied by a priest, I knelt on a chair in the nave and tried to fix my mind on the prayers (once so familiar) for the examination of conscience before confession:

"_Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, dispel the darkness of my heart, that I may bewail my sins and rightly confess them_."

But the labouring of my spirit was like the flight of a bat in the daylight. Though I tried hard to keep my mind from wandering, I could not do so. Again and again it went back to the lady in furs with the coroneted carriage and the high-stepping horses.

She was about my own age, and she began to rise before my tightly closed eyes as a vision of what I might have been myself if I had not given up everything for love--wealth, rank, title, luxury.

God is my witness that down to that moment I had never once thought I had made any sacrifice, but now, as by a flash of cruel lightning, I saw myself as I was--a peeress who had run away from her natural condition and was living in the slums, working like any other work-girl.

Even this did not hurt me much, but when I thought of the rosy-faced child in the carriage, and then of my own darling at Mrs. Oliver's as I had seen her last, so thin and pale, and with her little bib stained by her curdled milk, a feeling I had never had before pierced to my very soul.

I asked myself if this was what God looked down upon and permitted--that because I had obeyed what I still believed to be the purest impulse of my nature, love, my child must be made to suffer.

Then something hard began to form in my heart. I told myself that what I had been taught to believe about God was falsehood and deception.

All this time I was trying to hush down my mind by saying my prayer, which called on the gracious Virgin Mary to intercede for me with my Redeemer, and the holy Saints of God to assist me.

"_Assist me by thy grace, that I may be able to declare my sins to the priest, thy Vicar_."

It was of no use. Every moment my heart was hardening, and what I had intended to confess about my wicked thoughts of the night before was vanishing away. At last I rose to my feet and, lifting my head, looked boldly up at the altar.

Just at that moment the young peeress, having finished her confession, went off with a light step and a cheerful face. Her kneeling-place at the confessional box was now vacant, yet I did not attempt to take it, and some minutes passed in which I stood biting my lips to prevent a cry. Then the priest parted his curtains and beckoned to me, and I moved across and stood stubbornly by the perforated brass grating.

"Father," I said, as firmly as I could, for my throat was fluttering, "I came here to make my confession, but something has come over me since I entered this church, and now I cannot."

"What has come over you, my child?" asked the priest.

"I feel that what is said about God in a place like this, that He is a kind and beneficent Father, who is just and merciful and pities the sufferings of His children, is untrue. It is all wrong and false. _God does not care_."

The priest did not answer me immediately, but after a moment of silence he said in a quivering voice:

"My child, I feel just like that myself sometimes. It is the devil tempting you. He is standing by your side and whispering in your ear, at this moment."

I shuddered, and the priest added:

"I see how it is, my daughter. You are suffering, and those you love are suffering too. But must you surrender your faith on that account? Look round at the pictures on these walls [the Stations of the Cross]. Think of the Great Sufferer, the Great Martyr, who in the hour of His death, at the malicious power of the world, cried, '_Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani_: My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'"

I had dropped to my knees by now, my head was down, and my hands were clasped together.

"You are wrong, my child, if you think God does not care for you because He allows you to suffer. Are you rich? Are you prosperous? Have you every earthly blessing? Then beware, for Satan is watching for your soul. But are you poor? Are you going through unmerited trouble? Have you lost some one who was dearer to you than your heart of hearts? Then take courage, for our holy and blessed Saviour has marked you for His own."

I know nothing of that priest except his whispering voice, which, coming through the grating of the confessional, produced the effect of the supernatural, but I thought then, and I think now, that he must have been a great as well as a good man.

I perfectly recollect that, when I left the church and passed into the streets, it seemed as if his spirit went with me and built up in my soul a resolution that was bright with heavenly tears and sunshine.

Work! Work! Work! I should work still harder than before. No matter how mean, ill-paid, and uncongenial my work might be, I should work all day and all night if necessary. And since I had failed to get my child into an orphanage, it was clearly intended that I should keep her with me, for my own charge and care and joy.

This was the mood in which I returned to the house of the Jew.

It was Saturday morning, and though the broader thoroughfares of the East End were crowded and the narrower streets full of life, the Jew's house was silent, for it was the Jewish Sabbath.

As I went hurriedly upstairs I heard the Jew himself, who was dressing for the synagogue, singing his Sabbath hymn: _Lerho daudee likras kollo_--"Come, O friend, let us go forth to meet the Bride, let us receive the Sabbath with joy!"

Then came a shock.