nd if you are there impervious to them, we are lost: back I
go to my wilderness, where, as you perceive, I have contracted the habit
of listening to my own voice more than is good: The burden of a child in
her bosom had come upon Rosamund with the visage of the Angel of Death
fronting her in her path. She believed that she would die; but like much
that we call belief, there was a kernel of doubt in it, which was lively
when her frame was enlivened, and she then thought of the giving birth
to this unloved child, which was to disinherit the man she loved, in
whose interest solely (so she could presume to think, because it had
been her motive reason) she had married the earl. She had no wish to be
a mother; but that prospect, and the dread attaching to it at her time
of life, she could have submitted to for Lord Romfrey's sake. It struck
her like a scoffer's blow that she, the one woman on earth loving Nevil,
should have become the instrument for dispossessing him. The revulsion
of her feelings enlightened her so far as to suggest, without enabling
her to fathom him, that instead of having cleverly swayed Lord Romfrey,
she had been his dupe, or a blind accomplice; and though she was too
humane a woman to think of punishing him, she had so much to forgive
that the trifles daily and at any instant added to the load, flushed
her resentment, like fresh lights showing new features and gigantic
outlines. Nevil's loss of Cecilia she had anticipated; she had heard of
it when she was lying in physical and mental apathy at Steynham. Lord
Romfrey had repeated to her the nature of his replies to the searching
parental questions of Colonel Halkett, and having foreseen it all,
and what was more, foretold it, she was not aroused from her torpor.
Latterly, with the return of her natural strength, she had shown herself
incapable of hearing her husband speak of Nevil; nor was the earl tardy
in taking the hint to spare the mother of his child allusions that
vexed her. Now and then they occurred perforce. The presence of Cecilia
exasperated Rosamund's peculiar sensitiveness. It required Louise
Wardour-Devereux's apologies and interpretations to account for what
appeared to Cecilia strangely ill-conditioned, if not insane, in Lady
Romfrey's behaviour. The most astonishing thing to hear was, that Lady
Romfrey had paid Mrs. Devereux a visit at her Surrey house unexpectedly
one Sunday in the London season, for the purpose, as it became evident,
of