On the day and hour she met him as she had
promised to do.
'You shall see him,' she said, 'of course on the strict condition
that you do not reveal yourself, and hence, though you see him, he
must not see you, or your manner might betray you and me. I will
lull him into a nap in the afternoon, and then I will come to you
here, and fetch you indoors by a private way.'
The unfortunate father, whose misdemeanour had recoiled upon his own
head in a way he could not have foreseen, promised to adhere to her
instructions, and waited in the shrubberies till the moment when she
should call him. This she duly did about three o'clock that day,
leading him in by a garden door, and upstairs to the nursery where
the child lay. He was in his little cot, breathing calmly, his arm
thrown over his head, and his silken curls crushed into the pillow.
His father, now almost to be pitied, bent over him, and a tear from
his eye wetted the coverlet.
She held up a warning finger as he lowered his mouth to the lips of
the boy.
'But oh, why not?' implored he.
'Very well, then,' said she, relenting. 'But as gently as
possible.'
He kissed the child without waking him, turned, gave him a last
look, and followed her out of the chamber, when she conducted him
off the premises by the way he had come.
But this remedy for his sadness of heart at being a stranger to his
own son, had the effect of intensifying the malady; for while
originally, not knowing or having ever seen the boy, he had loved
him vaguely and imaginatively only, he now became attached to him in
flesh and bone, as any parent might; and the feeling that he could
at best only see his child at the rarest and most cursory moments,
if at all, drove him into a state of distraction which threatened to
overthrow his promise to the boy's mother to keep out of his sight.
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