mother. She added that her husband had so set his heart upon the one
object (viz., the desire to have children), and had spent so much
money for medicine and medical advice with a view to that end, that
she could not bear him to think that all his efforts were unavailing,
and her complaint having assumed a form to all outward appearances
similar to pregnancy, she had permitted him to delude himself with
the belief that the latter was the cause of her altered appearance,
and that scientific skill had counteracted the effects of years of
abuse.

I was greatly taken aback at this disclosure, but my surprise was as
nothing compared to that in hearing the plot which the woman's now
diseased mind had concocted. She said she was going to bear reproach
no longer (for, though her husband never murmured, at least in words,
his friends and her neighbors were ever ready to deepen her sorrow
and humiliation by taunting her with her impotency), and her eyes
rolled in frenzy as she almost shouted: I MUST AND SHALL HAVE A
CHILD'! Why am I prohibited from having what many do not know how to
value? Many of them cast their treasures from them; shall I, frantic
with despair, _refuse to pick one up_!

As she walked up and down the room in her fury, she looked like one
demented. Her hands were clenched till the nails entered her flesh,
her eyes rolled wildly, and, were I more easily frightened, I would
have felt impelled to call for help. Gradually becoming cooler,
Mrs. Quintin unfolded to me her plan for deceiving her husband, and,
with a coolness that I would not have pardoned but for her evidently
unhinged condition, actually _requested me to assist her?_ She said
she had been offered a child for adoption by a lady who was more
guilty and unfeeling than herself, and that the person in question