rom what she had lived before, and which
Philip had often perceived that she felt to be dull and restraining.
He already began to trace in the little girl, only a few days old,
the lovely curves that he knew so well by heart in the mother's
face. Sylvia, too, pale, still, and weak, was very happy; yes,
really happy for the first time since her irrevocable marriage. For
its irrevocableness had weighed much upon her with a sense of dull
hopelessness; she felt all Philip's kindness, she was grateful to
him for his tender regard towards her mother, she was learning to
love him as well as to like and respect him. She did not know what
else she could have done but marry so true a friend, and she and her
mother so friendless; but, at the same time, it was like lead on her
morning spirits when she awoke and remembered that the decision was
made, the dead was done, the choice taken which comes to most people
but once in their lives. Now the little baby came in upon this state
of mind like a ray of sunlight into a gloomy room.

Even her mother was rejoiced and proud; even with her crazed brain
and broken heart, the sight of sweet, peaceful infancy brought light
to her. All the old ways of holding a baby, of hushing it to sleep,
of tenderly guarding its little limbs from injury, came back, like
the habits of her youth, to Bell; and she was never so happy or so
easy in her mind, or so sensible and connected in her ideas, as when
she had Sylvia's baby in her arms.

It was a pretty sight to see, however familiar to all of us such
things may be--the pale, worn old woman, in her quaint,
old-fashioned country dress, holding the little infant on her knees,
looking at its open, unspeculative eyes, and talking the little
language to it as though it could understand; the father on his
knees, kept prisoner by a small, small finger curled round his
strong and sinewy one, and gazing at the tiny creature with
wondering idolatry; the young mother, fair, pale, and smiling,
propped up on pillows in order that she, too, might see the
wonderful babe; it was astonishing how the doctor could come and go
without being drawn into the admiring vortex, and look at this baby
just as if babies came into the world every day.

'Philip,' said Sylvia, one night, as he sate as still as a mouse in
her room, imagining her to be asleep. He was by her bed-side in a
moment.

'I've been thinking what she's to be called. Isabella, after mother;
and what were yo'r