Then Lily came suddenly back out of her rapture. She came back to the life to which he called her, in which he had played so strange a part. How her heart had melted toward him when he was not there! To be Ronald had seemed to her by moments to be every thing. But now that he was here, kneeling before her, his child on her knee, his arms around her, his kiss on her cheek, there rose up between them a wall as of iron, something which it seemed impossible should ever give way, a repulsion stronger than her own will, stronger than herself. She made an involuntary movement to free herself. And her face changed, the rose-hues went out of it, the light from her eyes. All well! How could all be well? Two years, during which this child had been growing into consciousness in another house, with other care, with neither father nor mother; and she left widowed and bereft, to play a lying part and be another creature—not what she was! And all for money, money—nothing better! And now the money was won by all those lies and deceptions, now all was to be well?
“Let me be,” she said hoarsely, “let me be! A little rest, I want a rest. I am not equal to any more.”
He got up to his feet, repulsed and angry. “You do not think what I am equal to,” he said, “or hesitate to inflict on me what punishment, what cruelty, you please! And yet every thing that has been done was done in your own interests, and who but you will get the good of it all?”
“My interests?” Lily cried.
And then there came an unexpected interruption. The baby, for all so young as he was, became aware of the change of aspect of things around him. His little roselip began to quiver, and then he set up a lamentable cry which, to the inexperienced heart of Lily, was far more dreadful than ever was the cry of a child. As she tried to soothe him there appeared in the doorway Margaret Bland, the woman who had taken him away. And Lily gave a cry like that of her child, and clung to the baby, who, for his small part, struggled to get to his nurse, the only familiar figure to him in all this strange place. “Not you,” cried Lily, “not that woman who stole him from me! Beenie! not you, not you!”
“And yet, mem,” said Margaret, “it is me that has been father and mother and all to him when none of you came near. And the darling is fond o’ me and me of him like my own flesh and blood.”
“Beenie, Beenie!” cried Lily, wild with terror, as the child slid and struggled out of her arms. “Katrin, Katrin! oh, don’t leave her, not for a moment—don’t let her take him away!”
Once more the cloud of women appeared at the door, all the maids of the house delighted over the child, and Beenie in the front, seizing Margaret by the skirts as she gathered up the child in her arms. “Na, na, she’ll no take him an inch out o’ my sight!” Beenie cried.
Lily stood up trembling, breathless, confronting her husband as this little tumult swept away. A passion of terror had succeeded her rapture of love and content; and yet there was a compunction in it and almost a touch of shame. That chorus of excited women did not add to the dignity of her position. He had not said any thing, but was walking up and down the room in impatience and annoyance. “Who do you think would take him from you now?” he cried in his exasperation, adding fuel to the fire.
Oh, not now! There were no interests to be involved now; the money was safe, for which all these hideous plans had been laid. If this was meant to soothe, it was an ill-chosen word. And for a moment these two people stood on the edge of one of those angry recriminations which aggravate every quarrel and take all dignity and all reason from the breach. Ronald perceived his mistake even before Lily could take any advantage of it, had she been disposed so to do.