When people learned, as they could hardly help doing from Mrs. Savor's
volubility, what his plan with regard to Idella had been, they instanced
that in proof of the injuriousness of his idealism as applied to real
life; and they held that she had been remanded in that strange way to Miss
Kilburn's charge for some purpose which she must not attempt to cross. As
the minister had been thwarted in another intent by death, it was a sign
that he was wrong in this too, and that she could do better by the child
than he had proposed.

This was the sum of popular opinion; and it was further the opinion of Mrs.
Gerrish, who gave more attention to the case than many others, that Annie
had first taken the child because she hoped to get Mr. Peck, when she found
she could not get Dr. Morrell; and that she would have been very glad to be
rid of it if she had known how, but that she would have to keep it now for
shame's sake.

For shame's sake certainly, Annie would have done several other things, and
chief of these would have been never to see Dr. Morrell again. She believed
that he not only knew the folly she had confessed to him, but that he had
divined the cowardice and meanness in which she had repented it, and she
felt intolerably disgraced before the thought of him. She had imagined
mainly because of him that escape to Rome which never has yet been
effected, though it might have been attempted if Idella had not wakened
ill from the sleep she sobbed herself into when she found herself safe in
Annie's crib again.