as her boy, and
strangely bestowed, not beautifully to be remembered rapturously or
gratefully, and with deep love of the father. She felt the wound
recollection dealt her. But the boy was her one treasure, and no treasure
to her husband. They were burdens, and the heir of his House, child of a
hated mother, was under perpetual menace from an unscrupulous tyrannical
man. The dread and antagonism were first aroused by the birth of her
child. She had not known while bearing him her present acute sensation of
the hunted flying and at bay. Previously, she could say: I did wrong
here; I did wrong there. Distrust had brought the state of war, which
allows not of the wasting of our powers in confessions.

Her husband fed her and he clothed her; the limitation of his bounty was
sharply outlined. Sure of her rectitude, a stranger to the world, she was
not very sensible of dishonour done to her name. It happened at times
that her father inquired of her how things were going with his little
Carin; and then revolt sprang up and answered on his behalf rather
fiercely. She was, however, prepared for any treaty including
forgiveness, if she could be at peace in regard to her boy, and have an
income of some help to her brother. Chillon was harassed on all sides;
she stood incapable of aiding; so foolishly feeble in the shadow of her
immense longing to strive for him, that she could think her husband had
purposely lamed her with an infant. Her love of her brother, now the one
man she loved, laid her insufficiency on the rack and tortured imbecile
cries from it.

On the contrary, her strange husband had blest her with an infant.
Everything was pardonable to him if he left her boy untouched in the
mother's charge. Much alone as she was, she raised the dead to pet and
cherish her boy. Chillon had seen him and praised him. Mrs. Owain Wythan,
her neighbour over a hill, praised him above all babes on earth, poor
childless woman!

She was about to cross the hill and breakfast with Mrs. Wythan. The time
for the weaning of the babe approached, and had as prospect beyond it her
dull fear that her husband would say the mother's work was done, and
seize the pretext to separate them: and she could not claim a longer term
to be giving milk, because her father had said: 'Not a quarter of a month
more than nine for the milk of the mother'--or else the child would draw
an unsustaining nourishment from the strongest breast. She could have
argued her e