Some months had passed when Margaret lived through a time in which death seemed very close at hand, and had her baby in her arms. She had not looked forward to this happily, but when it came, all motherhood awoke in her nature; all her love, pent up, and finding no outlet in another direction, flowed to this helpless and feeble creature. She lavished endless caresses upon it; she lived for it; she worshipped it.
Her letters to Grace, so scanty and so bare of any information, were now full of her infant, its progress, and its wonderful intelligence.
Mr. Drayton showed no feeling but that of jealousy in connection with it; but Margaret did not mind. It slept in her room, and she devoted herself to it.
Up to this time Mr. Drayton had never again given her cause for fearing him.
Even the experienced servant pronounced him as well as any one, and he resumed his usual occupations.
One night Margaret was upstairs with her child—late.
There had been a thunder-storm, and the thunder was still growling in the distance. Rain came on, and as Margaret sat by her little one she felt only natural pity for any wayfarers on such a stormy night.
How it poured, and how dark the night was! She closed the shutters for fear of the baby's slumbers being disturbed by the loud splashing of the rain upon a lower roof of an outhouse, and was taking up her book again, when her husband walked into the room, looking perfectly wild, a paper in his hand. With great difficulty she got him to go downstairs with her, calling her nurse to go to the child.
Cautious, and seeing how frightfully excited he was, she sat down near the bell, and tried to speak to him quietly.
But she was frightened when she saw that the paper he held was the record of her opinion of his character, written in Germany—that she had meant to destroy, and had long forgotten.