"Dolly. Dora, I believe, by register. My dear wife, I have told you all. In compassion to me let us drop the subject, now and for ever."
Was Eliza Hamlyn—sitting there with pale, compressed lips, sullen eyes, and hands interlocked in pain—already beginning to reap the fruit she had sown as Eliza Monk by her rebellious marriage? Perhaps so. But not as she would have to reap it later on.
Mr. and Mrs. Hamlyn spent nearly all that year in travelling. In September they came to Peacock's Range, taking it furnished for a term of old Mr. and Mrs. Peveril, who had not yet come back to it. It stood midway, as may be remembered, between Church Leet and Church Dykely, so that Eliza was close to her old home. Late in October a little boy was born: it would be hard to say which was the prouder of him, Philip Hamlyn or his wife.
"What would you like his name to be?" Philip asked her one day.
"I should like it to be Walter," said Mrs. Hamlyn.
"Walter!"
"Yes, I should. I like the name for itself, but I once had a dear little brother named Walter, just a year younger than I. He died before we came home to England. Have you any objection to the name?"
"Oh, no, no objection," he slowly said. "I was only thinking whether you would have any. It was the name given to my first child."
"That can make no possible difference—it was not my child," was her haughty answer. So the baby was named Walter James; the latter name also chosen by Eliza, because it had been old Mr. Monk's.
In the following spring Mr. Hamlyn had to go to the West Indies. Eliza remained at home; and during this time she became reconciled to her father.