ith a
noble woman's frankness, generosity, and meekness--that true meekness
which oftenest cleaves and melts the ringing metal of a high
spirit--Leslie had begun to love him, to fix her heart upon him, to grow
to him--stolid, sardonic statue that he was!--until that shock exposed
his flaws and wrenched her from her hold. Better to be thus rudely
dissevered, perhaps, than to waste her womanliness, puny and pale from
its vague bald nourishment, on a fraud and a farce.

Hector Garret awoke from his delusion, from his scholarly reveries, his
active enterprise. "He that provideth not for his own house is worse
than an infidel." So he watched Leslie: he saw her rise up with her
thoughtful face, very individual it appeared now, and go up and down
carrying her baby. He was aware that she was appropriating it as her
treasure; that she was saying to herself some such words--"Silver and
gold have I none, but this is my pearl beyond price; she will be enough
for me; she must be so; I will make her so. She and I will waste no more
silly tears on hard, changeable men. They are not like us, little
daughter; they pass us by, or they love us once with fierce desire; and
when satiated or balked, they turn to us again to please their eye,
flatter their ear, vary their leisure; to anatomize and torture like
other favourites of an hour. We will have none of them, save to do our
duty. We will live for each other."

Not that she deprived him of his rights as a father; she was too
magnanimous to be unjust, and she would not have balked that puppet, to
whose service she consecrated herself, of one privilege which any pangs
of hers could purchase.

She presented their child to him with a serious stateliness, as if it
was so very solemn a ceremony that its performance emancipated her from
ordinary emotion; she came and consulted him on the small questions that
concerned its welfare with the same absorbing care. If he came near her
when she bore the child in her arms, she offered it to him immediately:
she was righteous as well as valiant--yes, very valiant. He contemplated
her stedfastness with wonder. After the blow which overcame her, when a
compensation was given her--a blessing to atone for the gall in her cup,
she accepted it and cherished it, and set herself to be grateful for it
and worthy of it immediately. The fortitude which, after the
involuntary, inevitable rebellion, would permit no more idle repining,
the decent pride that hid it