ould intersect them.” He added in his inward and pondering

manner, as he looked at the moon, “It was twenty either way, I

remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in.”

The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that

time, deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was nothing to

shock her in the manner of his reference. He only seemed to

contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire

endurance that was over.

“I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the

unborn child from whom I had been rent. Whether it was alive.

Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother’s shock had

killed it. Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his

father. (There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for

vengeance was unbearable.) Whether it was a son who would

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

never know his father’s story; who might even live to weigh the

possibility of his father’s having disappeared of his own will and

act. Whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman.”

She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand.

“I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful

of merather, altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me. I

have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her

married to a man who knew nothing of my fa