irth of her children and the organization of her nursery
an almost detached affair for her. Sir Isaac went about in a preoccupied
way, whistling between his teeth and planning with expert advice the
equipment of an ideal nursery, and her mother and his mother became as
it were voluminous clouds of uncommunicative wisdom and precaution. In
addition the conversation of Miss Crump, the extremely skilled and
costly nurse, who arrived a full Advent before the child, fresh from the
birth of a viscount, did much to generalize whatever had remained
individual of this thing that was happening. With so much intelligence
focussed, there seemed to Lady Harman no particular reason why she
should not do her best to think as little as possible about the
impending affair, which meant for her, she now understood quite clearly,
more and more discomfort culminating in an agony. The summer promised to
be warm, and Sir Isaac took a furnished house for the great event in the
hills behind Torquay. The maternal instinct is not a magic thing, it has
to be evoked and developed, and I decline to believe it is indicative of
any peculiar unwomanliness in Lady Harman that when at last she beheld
her newly-born daughter in the hands of the experts, she moaned
druggishly, "Oh! please take it away. Oh! Take it--away.
Anywhere--anywhere."

It was very red and wrinkled and aged-looking and, except when it opened
its mouth to cry, extraordinarily like its father. This resemblance
disappeared--along with a crop of darkish red hair--in the course of a
day or two, but it left a lurking dislike to its proximity in her mind
long after it had become an entirely infantile and engaging baby.

Sec.4

Those early years of their marriage were the happiest period of Sir
Isaac's life.

He seemed to have everything that man could desire. He was still only
just forty at his marriage; he had made for himself a position
altogether dominant in the world of confectionery and popular
refreshment, he had won a title, he had a home after his own heart, a
beautiful young wife, and presently delightful children in his own
image, and it was only after some years of contentment and serenity and
with a certain incredulity that he discovered that something in his
wife, something almost in the nature of discontent with her lot, was
undermining and threatening all the comfort and beauty of his life.

Sir Isaac was one of those men whom modern England delights to honour, a
man