Just to show us the picture complete of her!”
Two years; two golden, beautiful, heavenly years. Then—it will not be easy to tell this part, yet it must be told.
Anne Peace thinks I am hard upon Rachel; her mother used to think I was just the reverse. She always seemed to me the one wholly selfish person I ever knew. She loved Manuel passionately; but so jealously that she did not even like to see him caress the baby, but would call him to her side, or make some excuse to give the child to Grandmother. And yet she was so jealous of Grandmother too! I do not think she ever cared much for the baby, yet she would have fits of jealous rage now and then.
“I’d like to know whose baby that is, Grandmother!” she would say. Grandmother would look up with the rapt smile she always wore when little Faith was in her arms.
“Whose baby? why, Rachel, don’t you know? White Rose, look at mother! throw a kiss to mother!”
“I don’t know as I do!” Rachel would go on. “I thought ’twas mine; I didn’t know as you’d had one, Grandmother, but maybe I was mistaken; maybe I just thought I had a baby, and she was yours all along.”
Then suddenly stamping her foot, she would flash out in the old way.
“I want you should understand that that child belongs to me and Manuel, and to no one else. I won’t have my own child taken away from me; I tell you I won’t! Give me my baby this minute!” And she would snatch the child from Grandmother’s arms. Of course then the poor little thing would begin to cry, frightened by her wild looks and angry voice, and this only enraged Rachel more. “You’ve turned her against me!” she shrieked. “You’ve stole her away from me, you wicked, wicked—” here she would break into a passion of furious sobs; and Grandmother would take the baby out of her arms and go away without a word, leaving her to storm and rave till Manuel came in to pet and caress her into good humor again.
But again, it would be Manuel at whom she would storm, accusing him of abetting Grandmother in her designs upon the baby; or still again, if she had her wish of the moment, and the baby was left with her for a few minutes, she would find herself ill-used and neglected, and left with all the care of the child on her hands. Well! poor Rachel!