Nea had never seen her father nor heard anything from him all this time. Maurice, it was true, had humbled himself again and again, but his letters had all been returned unopened.
But when her boy was born, Nea’s heart, softened by the joys of maternity, yearned passionately for a reconciliation, and by her husband’s advice, she stifled all feelings of resentment, and wrote as she had never written before, as she never could write again, but all in vain; the letter was returned, and in her weakened state Nea would have fretted herself to death over that unopened letter if it had not been for her husband’s tenderness and her baby’s innocent face.
How the young mother doated on her child! To her he was a miracle, a revelation. Nature had opened a fount of consolation in her troubles. She would lie patiently for hours on her couch, watching her baby in his sleep. Maurice, coming in jaded and weary from his work, would pause on the threshold to admire the picture. He thought his wife never looked so beautiful as when she had their boy in her arms.
And so the years passed on. Maurice worked, and struggled, and pinched, till his face grew old and careworn, and the hard racking cough began to make itself heard, and Nea’s fine color faded, for the children were coming fast now, and the days were growing darker and darker.
By and by there was a baby girl, with her father’s eyes, and beautiful as a little angel; then twin boys whom Nea kissed and fondled for a few weeks, and then laid in their little coffins; then another boy who only lived two years; and lastly, after a long lapse of time, another girl.
But when this one was born the end was fast approaching. Mr. Huntingdon had been abroad for a year or two, and had just returned to Belgrave House—so Mr. Dobson informed Nea when he dropped in one evening on one of his brief visits—and he had brought with him a young widowed niece and her boy.
Nea remembered her cousin Erle Huntingdon and the dark-eyed girl whom he had married and taken with him to Naples; but she had never heard of his death.
Doubtless her father meant to put Beatrice in her place, and make the younger Erle his heir; and Nea sighed bitterly as she looked at her boy playing about the room. Mr. Dobson interpreted the sight aright.
“Try again, Mrs. Trafford,” he said, holding out his hand as he rose; “humble yourself in the dust, for the sake of your children.” And Nea took his advice, but she never had any answer to her letter, and soon after that their kind old friend, Mr. Dobson, died, and then everything went wrong.
Maurice’s employer gave up business, and his successor, a hard grasping man, found fault with Maurice’s failing health, and dismissed him as an incompetent clerk; and this time Maurice found himself without friends.