“And could nothing be done to help them?” inquired Lady Gwendolyn, with a shudder.
“No, my lady. The sea was running so high the life-boat couldn’t get out. It makes me feel quite sad to live where such things are always happening.”
“Nonsense! Phœbe, you exaggerate,” exclaimed her mistress, almost sharply. “This is the first shipwreck we have had since we came here.”
“But if we are to have one every three months, it will be cheerful, my lady,” answered Phœbe, who did not wish to make the best of the present state of affairs, and thought it very foolish of Lady Gwendolyn to live in a little cottage by the sea, with a couple of women servants to wait upon her, when she might have the run of two mansions, and twenty dependents at least.
And it was terribly dull at Wintertown. Phœbe had been accustomed to a good deal of change, and not a soul came near Cliff Cottage, except the clergyman of the parish, and he never brought his wife.
Lady Gwendolyn received him because his visits comforted her, and, moreover, she knew that he was too much of a gentleman to pry into her affairs, but she never allowed him to suppose that she was other than what she called herself—Mrs. St. Maur.
Her beauty and aristocratic air made her an object of great curiosity in Wintertown, and, of course, the women were all against her, and felt sure that her seclusion was the cover for some disgraceful secret; but what did all this matter to her?
She believed that she was doing right at the sacrifice of all her earthly happiness, and when her heart yearned with a great yearning toward her husband, she knelt down and prayed wildly not to be delivered into temptation, but to have strength to endure even to the end.
One night, just as the earth was beginning to grow green again, and primrose and violets were sweetening the hedgerows, Lady Gwendolyn, only half-conscious still, came stupefied out of her hour of anguish to find a little face nestling against her bosom, and to hear with deep thankfulness that a man child was born into the world, and born to her.
Coming back to life herself from the very edge of the grave, the joy of maternity swallowed up the recollection of past peril, and she thrilled through her whole being as she pressed her white lips to the soft, wrinkled cheek.