her mother at times when she would have
been otherwise occupied with her baby; but Bell required very little
from any one: she was easily pleased, unexacting, and methodical
even in her dotage; preserving the quiet, undemonstrative habits of
her earlier life now that the faculty of reason, which had been at
the basis of the formation of such habits, was gone. She took great
delight in watching the baby, and was pleased to have it in her care
for a short time; but she dozed so much that it prevented her having
any strong wish on the subject.

So Sylvia contrived to get her baby as much as possible to herself,
in spite of the nursemaid; and, above all, she would carry it out,
softly cradled in her arms, warm pillowed on her breast, and bear it
to the freedom and solitude of the sea-shore on the west side of the
town where the cliffs were not so high, and there was a good space
of sand and shingle at all low tides.

Once here, she was as happy as she ever expected to be in this
world. The fresh sea-breeze restored something of the colour of
former days to her cheeks, the old buoyancy to her spirits; here she
might talk her heart-full of loving nonsense to her baby; here it
was all her own; no father to share in it, no nursemaid to dispute
the wisdom of anything she did with it. She sang to it, she tossed
it; it crowed and it laughed back again, till both were weary; and
then she would sit down on a broken piece of rock, and fall to
gazing on the advancing waves catching the sunlight on their crests,
advancing, receding, for ever and for ever, as they had done all her
life long--as they did when she had walked with them that once by
the side of Kinraid; those cruel waves that, forgetful of the happy
lovers' talk by the side of their waters, had carried one away, and
drowned him deep till he was dead. Every time she sate down to look
at the sea, this process of thought was gone through up to this
point; the next step would, she knew, bring her to the question she
dared not, must not ask. He was dead; he must be dead; for was she
not Philip's wife? Then came up the recollection of Philip's speech,
never forgotten, only buried out of sight: 'What kind of a woman are
yo' to go on dreaming of another man, and yo' a wedded wife?' She
used to shudder as if cold steel had been plunged into her warm,
living body as she remembered these words; cruel words, harmlessly
provoked. They were too much associated with physical pains to b