little limbs were
free from pain and his little stomach was not annoyed by internal
troubles. He kicked, and crowed, and sputtered, when his mother took
him, and put up his little fingers to clutch her hair, and was to her
as a young god upon the earth. Nothing in the world had ever been
created so beautiful, so joyous, so satisfactory, so divine! And they
told her that this apple of her eye was to be taken away from her!
No;--that must be impossible. "I will take him into my own room,
nurse, for a little while--you have had him all the morning," she
said; as though the "having baby" was a privilege over which there
might almost be a quarrel. Then she took her boy away with her,
and when she was alone with him, went through such a service in
baby-worship as most mothers will understand. Divide these two! No;
nobody should do that. Sooner than that, she, the mother, would
consent to be no more than a servant in her husband's house. Was not
her baby all the world to her?

On the evening of that day the husband and wife had an interview
together in the library, which, unfortunately, was as unsatisfactory
as Lady Milborough's visit. The cause of the failure of them all
lay probably in this,--that there was no decided point which, if
conceded, would have brought about a reconciliation. Trevelyan asked
for general submission, which he regarded as his right, and which in
the existing circumstances he thought it necessary to claim, and
though Mrs. Trevelyan did not refuse to be submissive she would make
no promise on the subject. But the truth was that each desired that
the other should acknowledge a fault, and that neither of them would
make that acknowledgment. Emily Trevelyan felt acutely that she
had been ill-used, not only by her husband's suspicion, but by the
manner in which he had talked of his suspicion to others,--to Lady
Milborough and the cook, and she was quite convinced that she was
right herself, because he had been so vacillating in his conduct
about Colonel Osborne. But Trevelyan was equally sure that justice
was on his side. Emily must have known his real wishes about Colonel
Osborne; but when she had found that he had rescinded his verbal
orders about the admission of the man to the house,--which he had
done to save himself and her from slander and gossip,--she had taken
advantage of this and had thrown herself more entirely than ever into
the intimacy of which he disapproved! When they met, each was so sor