‘But I want no maid; I can take care of my child without any help,’ cried Isabel.
‘And if you did that how much should I see of you?’ he said, with an almost sneer. ‘No, Isabel, I don’t want to be disagreeable, but my wife must be my wife, and not a baby’s nurse.’
‘She will soon be walking,’ said the young mother, trying with anxious wiles to recommend her child. ‘She would soon be—a help to me, Horace, instead of a trouble.’
‘You must consider it all well,’ he said; ‘it is not just our—your own pleasure that you must think of; you must remember what you owe to the child. She is too young for a long voyage, Isabel; probably she might fall ill—and die. My dear, I don’t want to frighten you—babies so often do.’
‘Oh, Horace, not with my care!’ cried Isabel. ‘God would protect her by sea as well as by land. The poor women have all their little children with them. What should happen to my darling more than to the rest?’
‘But it does happen to the half of the rest,’ he said, calmly. ‘I don’t want to frighten you, Isabel; but afterwards, if anything were to happen, you would blame me for not telling you. And then if she lived and grew up she might object to be severed from all her friends and her own country. She has her friends, I suppose—her—father’s friends.’
‘She can have no friend so near as her mother,’ said Isabel, in a voice which was scarcely audible.
‘What do you say? Of course you are her mother, my dear; but if she were to grow up to feel herself alone in a family, she—did not belong to, one may say—don’t you think she would reflect upon you for taking her from her home? My darling! I did not mean to vex you; I am only saying what you will think yourself when you look at it calmly and see it in a reasonable light.’
‘Oh, Horace, Horace,’ cried Isabel, clasping her hands, ‘did not you say she should be as your own? You would not take your own child from its mother? You would not leave her behind?’
‘Why should not I,’ he said, ‘if it would be for the child’s good?’