He will come! You know me, you pretty one?'

She held him near the window, and gazed with almost devouring eyes.

'He will be handsome--he will be beautiful!' she said. 'Oh! it is a
shame to say you are not! You are like your papa--you are a thorough
Martindale! That is your papa's bright eye, and the real Martindale
brow, you sweet, little, fair, feeble, helpless thing! Oh, nurse, I
can't spare him yet, and you have to unpack. Let me hold him. I know he
likes me. Don't you love Aunt Theodora, babe?'

Sarah let her keep him, mollified by her devotion to him, and relieved
at having him off her hands in taking possession of the great, bare,
scantily-furnished nursery. Theodora lamented over his delicate looks,
and was told he would not be here now but for his mamma, and the Isle
of Wight doctor, who had done him a power of good. She begged to hear of
all his wants; rang the bell, and walked up and down the room, caressing
him, until he grew fretful, and no one answering the bell she rang again
in displeasure, Sarah thanking her, and saying she wished to have him
ready for bed before his mamma came up.

After her public reception, Theodora would not be caught nursing him in
secret, so hastily saying she would send some one, she kissed the little
blue-veined forehead, and rushing at full speed down the back stairs,
she flew into the housekeeper's room; 'Jenkins, there's no one attending
to the nursery bell. I wish you would see to it. Send up some one with
some hot water to Master Martindale directly.'

As fast she ran back to her own room, ordered off Pauline to help Master
Martindale's nurse, and flung herself into her chair, in a wild fit of
passion.

'Improvisatrice! Prince's parties! this is what it is to be great, rich,
horrid people, and live a heartless, artificial life! Even this silly,
affected girl has the natural instincts of a mother, she nurses her sick
child, it lies on her bosom, she guards it jealously! And we! we might
as well have been hatched in an Egyptian oven! No wonder we are hard,
isolated, like civil strangers. I have a heart! Yes, I have, but it is
there by mistake, while no one cares for it--all throw it from them. Oh!
if I was but a village child, a weeding woman, that very baby, so that
I might only have the affection that comes like the air to the weakest,
the meanest. That precious baby! he smiled at me; he looked as if he
would know me. Oh! he is far more lovable, with those sweet, litt