joke; but the
words came up again in after days, as words idly spoken sometimes
do.

Before the end of that first year, Philip had learnt to be jealous
of his wife's new love for Hester. To the latter, Sylvia gave the
free confidence on many things which Philip fancied she withheld
from him. A suspicion crossed his mind, from time to time, that
Sylvia might speak of her former lover to Hester. It would be not
unnatural, he thought, if she did so, believing him to be dead; but
the idea irritated him.

He was entirely mistaken, however; Sylvia, with all her apparent
frankness, kept her deep sorrows to herself. She never mentioned her
father's name, though he was continually present to her mind. Nor
did she speak of Kinraid to human being, though, for his sake, her
voice softened when, by chance, she spoke to a passing sailor; and
for his sake her eyes lingered on such men longer than on others,
trying to discover in them something of the old familiar gait; and
partly for his dead sake, and partly because of the freedom of the
outlook and the freshness of the air, she was glad occasionally to
escape from the comfortable imprisonment of her 'parlour', and the
close streets around the market-place, and to mount the cliffs and
sit on the turf, gazing abroad over the wide still expanse of the
open sea; for, at that height, even breaking waves only looked like
broken lines of white foam on the blue watery plain.

She did not want any companion on these rambles, which had somewhat
of the delight of stolen pleasures; for all the other respectable
matrons and town-dwellers whom she knew were content to have always
a business object for their walk, or else to stop at home in their
own households; and Sylvia was rather ashamed of her own yearnings
for solitude and open air, and the sight and sound of the
mother-like sea. She used to take off her hat, and sit there, her
hands clasping her knees, the salt air lifting her bright curls,
gazing at the distant horizon over the sea, in a sad dreaminess of
thought; if she had been asked on what she meditated, she could not
have told you.

But, by-and-by, the time came when she was a prisoner in the house;
a prisoner in her room, lying in bed with a little baby by her
side--her child, Philip's child. His pride, his delight knew no
bounds; this was a new fast tie between them; this would reconcile
her to the kind of life that, with all its respectability and
comfort, was so different f