dead and had left her the
whole of a very considerable fortune, the product, mainly, of dealings
in lumber. Mr. and Mrs. Redwing in fact found themselves possessed of
nearly fourteen thousand a year, proceeding from most orderly
investments. This would naturally involve a change in their mode of
life. In the first place they paid a visit to America; then they settled
in London, where, about the same time, their only child, Beatrice was
born. A month after the child's coming into the world, the father
withdrew from it--into a private lunatic asylum. He had not been himself
from the day when he heard of the fortune that had come to him; such an
access of blessedness was not provided for in the constitution of his
mind. Probably few men of his imaginative temperament and hard
antecedents could have borne the change without some little unsettling
of mental balance; we are framed to endure any amount of ill, but have
to take our chance in the improbable event of vast joy befalling us.
Poor Redwing conceived a suspicion that his wife desired to murder him;
one night as she was following him into their bedroom, he suddenly
turned round, caught hold of her with violence, and flung her to the
ground, demanding the knife which he protested he had seen gleam in her
hand. It was no longer safe to live with him; he was put under
restraint, and never again knew freedom. In less than a year he died, a
moping maniac.

Mrs. Redwing was an invalid thenceforth; probably it was only the
existence of her child that saved her life. An affection of the heart in
course of time declared itself, but, though her existence was believed
to hang on a thread, she lived on and on, lived to see Beatrice grow to
womanhood. She kept a small house in London, but spent the greater part
of the year at home or foreign health-resorts. Her relatives had
supposed that she would return to her own country, but Mrs. Redwing had
tastes which lacked gratification in a provincial manufacturing town.
Without having achieved much positive culture, she had received from her
husband an impulse towards the development of certain higher
possibilities in her nature, and she liked the society of mentally
active people. The state of her health alone withheld her from a second
marriage; she was not a very patient invalid, and suffered keenly in the
sense of missing the happiness which life had offered her. In the matter
of her daughter's education she exercised much care. Doc