Amantium Irae

Frankness and kindness like Amelia's were likely to touch even such a
hardened little reprobate as Becky. She returned Emmy's caresses and
kind speeches with something very like gratitude, and an emotion which,
if it was not lasting, for a moment was almost genuine. That was a
lucky stroke of hers about the child "torn from her arms shrieking." It
was by that harrowing misfortune that Becky had won her friend back,
and it was one of the very first points, we may be certain, upon which
our poor simple little Emmy began to talk to her new-found acquaintance.

"And so they took your darling child from you?" our simpleton cried
out. "Oh, Rebecca, my poor dear suffering friend, I know what it is to
lose a boy, and to feel for those who have lost one. But please Heaven
yours will be restored to you, as a merciful merciful Providence has
brought me back mine."

"The child, my child? Oh, yes, my agonies were frightful," Becky owned,
not perhaps without a twinge of conscience. It jarred upon her to be
obliged to commence instantly to tell lies in reply to so much
confidence and simplicity. But that is the misfortune of beginning
with this kind of forgery. When one fib becomes due as it were, you
must forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of
your lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of
detection increases every day.

"My agonies," Becky continued, "were terrible (I hope she won't sit
down on the bottle) when they took him away from me; I thought I should
die; but I fortunately had a brain fever, during which my doctor gave
me up, and--and I recovered, and--and here I am, poor and friendless."