and no
treasure to her husband. They were burdens, and the heir of his House,
child of a hated mother, was under perpetual menace from an unscrupulous
tyrannical man. The dread and antagonism were first aroused by the birth
of her child. She had not known while bearing him her present acute
sensation of the hunted flying and at bay. Previously, she could say:
I did wrong here; I did wrong there. Distrust had brought the state of
war, which allows not of the wasting of our powers in confessions.

Her husband fed her and he clothed her; the limitation of his bounty was
sharply outlined. Sure of her rectitude, a stranger to the world, she
was not very sensible of dishonour done to her name. It happened at
times that her father inquired of her how things were going with his
little Carin; and then revolt sprang up and answered on his behalf
rather fiercely. She was, however, prepared for any treaty including
forgiveness, if she could be at peace in regard to her boy, and have an
income of some help to her brother. Chillon was harassed on all sides;
she stood incapable of aiding; so foolishly feeble in the shadow of her
immense longing to strive for him, that she could think her husband had
purposely lamed her with an infant. Her love of her brother, now the one
man she loved, laid her insufficiency on the rack and tortured imbecile
cries from it.

On the contrary, her strange husband had blest her with an infant.
Everything was pardonable to him if he left her boy untouched in the
mother's charge. Much alone as she was, she raised the dead to pet
and cherish her boy. Chillon had seen him and praised him. Mrs. Owain
Wythan, her neighbour over a hill, praised him above all babes on earth,
poor childless woman!

She was about to cross the hill and breakfast with Mrs. Wythan. The time
for the weaning of the babe approached, and had as prospect beyond it
her dull fear that her husband would say the mother's work was done,
and seize the pretext to separate them: and she could not claim a longer
term to be giving milk, because her father had said: 'Not a quarter of
a month more than nine for the milk of the mother'--or else the child
would draw an unsustaining nourishment from the strongest breast. She
could have argued her exceptional robustness against another than he.
But the dead father wanting to build a great race of men and women
ruled.

Carinthia knelt at the cradle of a princeling gone from the rich repast
to his alte