The Misses Leaf were content that he should do as he pleased in the matter: he had shown strong but not exaggerated grief at his loss; if any remorse mingled therewith, Selina's sisters happily did not know it. Nobody ever did know the full history of things except Elizabeth, and she kept it to herself. So the family skeleton was buried quietly in Mrs. Ascott's grave.
Peter Ascott showed, in his coarse fashion, much sympathy and consideration for his wife's sisters. He had them staying in the house till a week after the funeral was over, and provided them with the deepest and handsomest mourning. He even, in a formal way took counsel with them as to the carrying out of Mrs. Ascott's wishes, and the retaining of Elizabeth in charge of the son and heir, which was accordingly settled. And then they went back to their old life at Richmond, and the widower returned to his solitary bachelor ways. He looked as usual; went to and from the City as usual; and his brief married life seemed to have passed away from him like a dream.
Not altogether a dream. Gradually he began to awake to the consciousness of an occasional child's cry in the house—that large, silent, dreary house, where he was once more the sole, solitary master. Sometimes, when he came in from church of Sundays, he would mount another flight of stairs, walk into the nursery at the top of the house, and stare with distant curiosity at the little creature in Elizabeth's arms, pronounce it a "fine child, and did her great credit!" and then walk down again. He never seemed to consider it as his child, this poor old bachelor of so many years' standing; he had outgrown apparently all sense of the affections or the duties of a father. Whether they ever would come into him; whether, after babyhood was passed, he would begin to take an interest in the little creature who throve and blossomed into beauty—which, as if watched by guardian angles, dead mothers' children often seem to do—was a source of earnest speculation to Elizabeth.
In the mean time he treated both her and the baby with extreme consideration, allowed her to do just as she liked, and gave her indefinite sums of money to expend upon the nursery.
When summer came, and the doctor ordered change of air, Mr. Ascott consented to her suggestion of taking a lodging for herself and baby near baby's aunts at Richmond; only desiring that the lodging should be as handsome as could be secured, and that every other Sunday she should bring up his son to spend the day at Russell Square.
And so, during the long summer months, the motherless child, in its deep mourning—which looks so pathetic on a very young baby—might be seen carried about in Elizabeth's arms every where. When, after the first six weeks, the wet nurse left—in fact, two or three nurses successively were abolished—she took little Henry solely under her own charge. She had comparatively small experience, but she had common sense, and the strong motherly instinct which comes by nature to some women. Besides, her whole soul was wrapped up in this little child.
From the hour when, even with her mistress dying before her eyes, Elizabeth had felt a strange thrill of comfort in the new duty which had come into her blank life, she took to this duty as women only can whose life has become a blank. She received the child as a blessing sent direct from God; by unconscious hands—for Mrs. Ascott knew nothing of what happened; something that would heal her wounded heart, and make her forget Tom.
And so it did. Women and mothers well know how engrossing is the care of an infant; how each minute of the day is filled up with something to be done or thought of; so that "fretting" about extraneous things becomes quite impossible. How gradually the fresh life growing up and expanding puts the worn out or blighted life into the back ground, and all the hopes and fancies cling around the small, beautiful present, the ever developing, the ever marvelous mystery of a young child's existence! Why it should be so, we can only guess; but that it is so, many a wretched wife, many a widowed mother, many a broken hearted, forlorn aunt, has thankfully proved.
Elizabeth proved it likewise. She did not exactly lose all memory of her trouble, but it seemed lighter; it was swallowed up in this second passion of adopted motherhood. And so she sank, quietly and at once, into the condition of a middle aged woman, whose life's story—and her sort of women have but one—was a mere episode, told and ended.
For Esther had left and been married to Tom Cliffe within a few week's of Mrs. Ascott's funeral. Of course, the household knew every thing; but nobody condoled with Elizabeth. There was a certain stand-off-ishness about her which made them hold their tongues. They treated her with much respect, as her new position demanded. She took this, as she took every thing, with the grave quietness which was her fashion from her youth up; assumed her place as a confidential upper servant; dressed well but soberly, like a woman of forty, and was called "Mrs. Hand."