ng a mind like running water, she was soon seated on a garden
chair, singing over her nursling like a mavis: she had delivered him to
Millar while she went to speak her mind to her old lover.

As for Richard Bassett, he was theory-bitten, and so turned every thing
one way. To be sure, as long as the woman's glaring eyes and face
distorted by passion were before him, he interpreted her words simply;
but when he thought the matter over he said to himself, "The evil-eye!
That is all bosh; the girl is in Lady Bassett's secrets; and I am not
to see young master: some day I shall know the reason why."

Sir Charles Bassett now belonged to the tribe of clucking cocks quite
as much as his cousin had ever done; only Sir Charles had the good
taste to confine his clucks to his own first-floor. Here, to be sure,
he richly indemnified himself for his self-denial abroad. He sat for
hours at a time watching the boy on the ground at his knee, or in his
nurse's arms.

And while he watched the infant with undisguised delight, Lady Bassett
would watch _him_ with a sort of furtive and timid complacency.

Yet at times she suffered from twinges of jealousy--a new complaint
with her.

I think I have mentioned that Sir Charles, at first, was annoyed at
seeing his son and heir nursed by a woman of low condition. Well, he
got over that feeling by degrees, and, as soon as he did get over it,
his sentiments took quite an opposite turn. A woman for whom he did
very little, in his opinion--since what, in Heaven's name, were a
servant's wages?--he saw that woman do something great for him; saw her
nourish his son and heir from her own veins; the child had no other
nurture; yet the father saw him bloom and thrive, and grow
surprisingly.

A weak observer, or a less enthusiastic parent, might have overlooked
all this; but Sir Charles had naturally an observant eye and an
analytical mind, and this had been suddenly but effectually developed
by the asylum and his correspondence with Rolfe.

He watched the nurse, then, and her maternal acts with a curious and
grateful eye, and a certain reverence for her power.

He observed, too, that his child reacted on the woman: she had never
sung in the house before; now she sang ravishingly--sang, in low,
mellow, yet sonorous notes, some ditties that had lulled mediaeval
barons in their cradles.

And what had made her vocal made her beautiful at times.

Before, she had appeared to him a handsome girl,