ver
mind; that, too, will be valuable experience.' There followed many
affectionate phrases, but Nancy's heart remained cold.

He wrote next from Washington, after six weeks' silence. Difficulties
of which he would speak at length in another letter had caused him to
postpone answering the two letters he had received. Nancy must never
lose faith in him; his love was unshaken; before the birth of her child
he would assuredly be back in England. Let her address to New York. He
was well, but could not pretend to be very cheerful. However, courage!
He had plans and hopes, of which she should soon hear.

After that, Nancy knew nothing of him, save that he was living in New
York. He wrote two or three times, but briefly, always promising
details in the next epistle. Then he ceased to correspond. Not even
the announcement of the child's birth elicited a word from him. One
subsequent letter had Nancy despatched; this unanswered, she would write
no more.

She was herself surprised at the calmness with which she faced so
dreadful a possibility as desertion by the man she had loved and
married, the father of her baby. It meant, perhaps, that she could not
believe such fate had really befallen her. Even in Tarrant's last short
letter sounded a note of kindness, of truthfulness, incompatible, it
seemed to her, with base cruelty. 'I dreamt of you last night, dearest,
and woke up with a heart that ached for your suffering.' How could a man
pen those words, and be meditating dastardly behaviour to the woman he
addressed? Was he ill, then? or had fatal accident befallen him? She
feared such explanation only in her weakest moments. If, long ago, he
could keep silence for six weeks at a time, why not now for months?
As for the news she had sent him--does a man think it important that a
little child has been born into the world? Likely enough that again he
merely 'postponed' writing. Of course he no longer loved her, say what
he might; at most he thought of her with a feeling of compassion--not
strong enough to overcome his dislike of exertion. He would come
back--when it pleased him.

Nancy would not sully her mind by thinking that he might only return
when her position made it worth his while. He was not a man of that
stamp. Simply, he had ceased to care for her; and having no means of his
own, whilst she was abundantly provided, he yielded to the temptation
to hold aloof from a woman whose claim upon him grew burdensome. Her
thought