“I never saw a bonnier babe, ma’am,” said the nurse cheerfully. “How proud his poor pa would be of him if he could see him.”
Lady Gwendolyn shivered, and her joy was poisoned in a moment. This child belonged to her husband as well as to herself, and how could she ever look at it without being reminded of the saddest page in her life—of the wrong and treachery that had made her future a blank. The boy had his father’s deep blue eyes, and when they began to open fuller, Lady Gwendolyn had a strange fancy that they reproached her, and would turn uneasily away.
Was it possible that she had been too hasty? She had, of course, done right to leave Sir Lawrence, but she might have written and explained her motives, and given him a chance of excusing himself, for her own sake. In trying to punish him, she had left herself without any comfort, and the position was irretrievable now, since, if she showed any signs of relenting, he would imagine that she was ready to condone the past, and live with him, anyhow, rather than not live with him at all.
The boy was a month old before Lady Gwendolyn began to recover her strength, and, meanwhile, her expenses were very large. Doctors and nurses cost money, and the young mother’s extreme delicacy made economy out of the question for the present. Then, in her maternal pride, she was apt to forget that Master Lawrence was not heir to Milworth Abbey and Borton Hall, and indulged in extravagances her income would not stand.
Keeping no accounts, she did not realize, indeed, what she was spending, and was horrified one day, when, in looking in what she called her reserve purse, she found that it only contained five pounds.
And it wanted a month yet of dividend day. What was to be done? She had been in the habit of paying ready money for everything, and did not even know that she could obtain credit in the town, neither would her pride allow her to ask it.
She had left all her jewels in Mr. Large’s charge, otherwise she would have sacrificed a diamond ornament, and taken care to be more careful for the future. But under present circumstances this was out of the question, and meanwhile she must have sufficient to pay her weekly bills. She pondered the question anxiously all night, and by morning she had come to the conclusion that there was no help for it, and she must write to Mr. Large.
This was a sore humiliation to Lady Gwendolyn, the more so that Mr. Large had seemed to think she would not be able to manage on her income, having been accustomed to such lavish expenditure, and she had assured him that she intended to make it do, and had taken rather a lofty tone on the occasion. But it was better to eat humble pie than to run into debt, in a place where her only claim to consideration was the punctuality of her payments; so she put her pride in her pocket, and wrote off to Mr. Large, saying that her expenses had been much greater than she had anticipated of late, that she must ask him to advance her fifty pounds, and deduct them from her dividends when they became due.
Directly this letter was despatched, Lady Gwendolyn felt easier in her mind, although the effort it had cost her to write it had made her quite ill.
“And if I am embarrassed now,” she said to herself grimly, “what will it be when baby gets a big boy, and wants educating, and all that sort of thing? I haven’t even a rich maiden aunt to leave me money, and I have always heard that boys are expensive things to bring up. If we were in our right position now——But I will not think of that, since it is so impossible,” she added quickly. “I must do my best, and trust all the rest to Providence. I have heard of people who lived upon even less than six hundred a year, and now that I always dress in black, my clothes won’t cost me much.”