. All this Philip might have
seen; did see, in fact; but heeded not one jot. Almost opposite to
him, not ten yards apart, standing on the raised step at the
well-known shop door, was Sylvia, holding a child, a merry dancing
child, up in her arms to see the show. She too, Sylvia, was laughing
for pleasure, and for sympathy with pleasure. She held the little
Bella aloft that the child might see the gaudy procession the better
and the longer, looking at it herself with red lips apart and white
teeth glancing through; then she turned to speak to some one behind
her--Coulson, as Philip saw the moment afterwards; his answer made
her laugh once again. Philip saw it all; her bonny careless looks,
her pretty matronly form, her evident ease of mind and prosperous
outward circumstances. The years that he had spent in gloomy sorrow,
amongst wild scenes, on land or by sea, his life in frequent peril
of a bloody end, had gone by with her like sunny days; all the more
sunny because he was not there. So bitterly thought the poor
disabled marine, as, weary and despairing, he stood in the cold
shadow and looked upon the home that should have been his haven, the
wife that should have welcomed him, the child that should have been
his comfort. He had banished himself from his home; his wife had
forsworn him; his child was blossoming into intelligence unwitting
of any father. Wife, and child, and home, were all doing well
without him; what madness had tempted him thither? an hour ago, like
a fanciful fool, he had thought she might be dead--dead with sad
penitence for her cruel words at her heart--with mournful wonder at
the unaccounted-for absence of her child's father preying on her
spirits, and in some measure causing the death he had apprehended.
But to look at her there where she stood, it did not seem as if she
had had an hour's painful thought in all her blooming life.

Ay! go in to the warm hearth, mother and child, now the gay
cavalcade has gone out of sight, and the chill of night has
succeeded to the sun's setting. Husband and father, steal out into
the cold dark street, and seek some poor cheap lodging where you may
rest your weary bones, and cheat your more weary heart into
forgetfulness in sleep. The pretty story of the Countess Phillis,
who mourned for her husband's absence so long, is a fable of old
times; or rather say Earl Guy never wedded his wife, knowing that
one she loved better than him was alive all the time she had