The child coddled down again to her.

"What must I tell him for you, Mamma?" she asked.

Mrs. Marsden started. She had not expected that.

"Send him kind message, Mamma, just like your own sweet self. You are so
good to everybody, and he is your little daughter's papa, and you love him
dearly, don't you, dear Mamma?"

Then the woman-heart gave a great leap and reached out to that other heart
the child was pleading for, and it seemed as if they touched, although
miles separated them, and pride lay prostrate.

"I have erred," she reasoned dumbly, "erred in the sight of God and man. I
have been hard, hard. What right have I to hold him to so strict an
account? By my own contrition and unutterable yearning to behold his
face, will I judge him, and naught else, the husband of my youth, once
the delight of my eyes."

Then, having gone thus far, she could stop at nothing. Her eyes shone,
varying emotions chased over her beautiful face, her whole nature unbent,
tender, as when she stood in that room in the old days and heard the
benediction that pronounced them man and wife.

"O, you dear child!" she cried, "surely God has put in your little hands
the gift of healing. Tell him, tell him, your Father, that for ten long
years, the string has been on the outside of the latch for him. Tell
him"--then, utterly unable to say more, she bowed her head and wept.