ge of you, ma'am," said Nanna, conscious of the
other's blunder.

"I wish she had my strength," said Anne, in a voice fine and trenchant as
a sword.

Nanna and the nurse retired discreetly.

The parents looked at each other over the frail body of the little girl.
Majendie's face had flushed under his wife's blow. He knew that she was
thinking of Edith and her fate. The same malady had appeared in more
than one member of his family, as Anne was well aware. (Her own strain
was pure.) Instinctively he put his hand to the child's spine. Little
Peggy sat up straight and strong enough. And another thought passed
through him. His eyes conveyed it to Anne as plainly as if he had said,
"I don't know about her mother's strength. She's the child of her
mother's coldness."

He set the child down on Anne's lap, told her to be good there, and left
them.

Anne saw how she had hurt him, and was visited with an unfamiliar pang of
self-reproach. She was very nice to him all that evening. And out of his
own pain a kinder thought came to him. He had been the cause of great
unhappiness to Anne. There might be a sense in which the child was
suffering from her mother's martyrdom. He persuaded himself that the
least he could do was to leave Anne in supreme possession of her.

CHAPTER XX

What with anxiety about his daughter and his sister, and a hopeless
attachment to his wife, Majendie's misery became so acute that it told
upon his health. His friends, Gorst and the Hannays, noticed the change
and spent themselves in persistent efforts to cheer him. And, at times
when his need of distraction became imperious, he declined from Anne's
lofty domesticities upon the Hannays. He liked to go over in the evening,
and sit with Mrs. Hannay, and talk about his child. Mrs. Hannay was never
tired of listening. The subject drew her out quite remarkably, so that
Mrs. Hannay, always soft and kind, showed at her very softest and
kindest. To talk to her was like resting an aching head upon the down
cushion to which it was impossible not to compare her. It was the
Hannays' bitter misfortune that they had no children; but this
frustration had left them hearts more hospitably open to their friends.

Mrs. Hannay called in Prior Street, at stated intervals, to see Edith and
the baby. On these occasions Anne, if taken unaware by Mrs. Hannay, was
always perfect and polite, but when she knew that Mrs. Hannay was coming,
she contrived adroitly to be o