at Stirling, enforced thereunto by the
entreaties, almost the commands, of Elspie Murray, against whom she
bitterly murmured sometimes, for shutting her up in such a dull Scotch
town. When Elspie urged her unprotected situation, the necessity of
living in retirement, for the "honour of the family," while Captain
Angus was away, Mrs. Rothesay sometimes frowned, but more often put the
matter off with a merry jest. Meanwhile she consoled herself by going as
much into society as the limited circle of Dr. and Mrs. Johnson allowed;
and therein, as usual, the lovely, gay, winning young creature was
spoiled to her heart's content.

So she still lived the life of a wayward, petted child, whose natural
instinct for all things good and beautiful kept her from ever doing
what was positively wrong, though she did a great deal that was foolish
enough in its way. She was, as she jestingly said, "a widow bewitched;"
but she rarely coquetted, and then only in that innocent way which comes
natural to some women, from a universal desire to please. And she never
ceased talking and thinking of her noble Angus.

When his letters came, she always made a point of kissing them
half-a-dozen times, and putting them under her pillow at night, just
like a child! And she wrote to him regularly once a month--pretty,
playful, loving letters. But there was in them one peculiarity--they
were utterly free from that delicious maternal egotism which chronicles
all the little incidents of babyhood. She said, in answer to her
husband's questions, that "Olive was well;" "Olive could just walk;"
"Olive had learned to say 'Papa and Elspie.'" Nothing more.

The fatal secret she had not dared to tell him.

Her first letters--full of joy about "the loveliest baby that ever was
seen"--had brought his in return echoing the rapture with truly paternal
pride. They reached her in her misery, to which they added tenfold.
Every sentence smote her with bitter regret, even with shame, as though
it were her fault in having given to the world the wretched child.
Captain Rothesay expressed his joy that his little daughter was not only
healthy, but pretty; for, he said, "He should be quite unhappy if she
did not grow up as beautiful as her mother." The words pierced Sybilla's
heart; she could not--dared not tell him the truth; not yet, at least.
And whenever Elspie's rough honesty urged her to do so, she fell into
such agonies of grief and anger, that the nurse was obliged