"He will! They love one another devotedly, and each is ignorant of the other's feelings, but when they meet everything will be arranged satisfactorily. So you see, my dear Guy, the value of absence, for if Otterburn hadn't gone away, he certainly would not have won the heart of Victoria Sheldon."
"And you advise me to do the same?"
"I do, decidedly! Leave your wife for a few weeks, and if she has any love for you--which she must have, or else she would not have married you--she will miss you hourly, and when you come back--well the game will be in your own hands."
Guy did not reply for a few minutes, but urged his horse into a canter, and the two rode along for some distance in silence. When nearing Denfield, however, Errington suddenly drew his horse up, and turned his head towards Eustace.
"I will take your advice," he said abruptly, "it can do no harm, and it may do good."
[CHAPTER XXII.]
FROM THE WIFE'S POINT OF VIEW.
"What is the purest love on earth?
A maiden's love for summer mirth?
A lover's worship of his idol
When bells ring out his happy bridal?
A patriot's when on foreign strand
He suffers for his native land?
A poet's or musician's love
For thoughts inspired from above?
Ah, no, the love most undefiled
Is that the mother gives the child."
Lady Errington was as usual in the nursery, sitting in a low chair near the window, watching "Sammy" playing on the floor. "Sammy," otherwise Henry Gerald Guy Errington, was now a year old, and looked what he was, a remarkably fine child, of which any mother might be proud. "Proud," however, is too weak a word to use in connection with Alizon's love for her child, seeing that this small scrap of humanity rolling about at her feet was worshipped by her with an affection absolutely idolatrous. All her ideas, her thoughts, her affections, were bound up in Sammy, and had it been a question of death for mother or child, there is no doubt that Alizon would have cheerfully yielded up her own life to save that of her baby.
Nor was Sammy undeserving of worship, for he was really a beautiful boy, with the frank expression of his father's handsome face, and a healthy, sturdy little frame, which seemed to defy disease. During his twelve months of existence he had been very healthy, and even in the delicate matter of cutting his teeth had been more successful than the generality of infants. With his rosy little face, his big, blue eyes and soft yellow curls of hair, he looked as an obsequious nurse expressed it, "a perfect picter." That worthy lady, Mrs. Tasker by name, and fat, plethoric and red-faced by nature, was at the end of the nursery attending to some articles of the young gentleman's toilet, and Alizon had her child all to herself, for which privilege she was profoundly grateful, as Mrs. Tasker was a terrible autocrat.