otally indifferent as to whom he
admired. Others she found it hard to bear. The man was by nature a
bully, one who found pleasure in oppressing the helpless, and who
loved, in the privacy of his home, to wreak the ill-temper which he was
forced to conceal abroad. In company, and especially before any of her
people, he treated her with the greatest deference, and would even make
loud laudatory remarks concerning her; when they were alone there was a
different tale to tell, particularly if she had in any way failed in
promoting that social advancement for which he had married her.

"What do you suppose I give you all those jewels and fine clothes for,
to say nothing of the money you waste in keeping up the house?" he
would ask brutally.

Jane made no answer; silence was her only shield, but her heart burned
within her. It is probable, notwithstanding her somewhat exaggerated
ideas of duty and wifely obedience, that she would have plucked up her
courage and left him, even if she must earn her own living as a
sempstress, had it not been for one circumstance. That circumstance was
the arrival in the world of her daughter, Isobel. In some ways this
event did not add to her happiness, if that can be added to which does
not exist, for the reason that her husband never forgave her because
this child, her only one, was not a boy. Nor did he lose any
opportunity of telling her this to her face, as though the matter were
one over which she had control. In others, however, for the first time
in her battered little life, she drank deep of the cup of joy. She
loved that infant, and from the first it loved her and her only, while
to the father it was indifferent, and at times antagonistic.

From the cradle Isobel showed herself to be an individual of character.
Even as a little girl she knew what she wanted and formed her own
opinions quite independently of those of others. Moreover, in a certain
way she was a good-looking child, but of a stamp totally different from
that of either of her parents. Her eyes were not restless and
prominent, like her father's, or dark and plaintive, like her mother's,
but large, grey and steady, with long curved lashes. In fact, they were
fine, but it was her only beauty, since the brow above them was almost
too pronounced for that of a woman, the mouth was a little large, and
the nose somewhat irregular. Her hair, too, though long and thick, was
straight and rather light-coloured. For the rest she was