ed, even in his own neighbourhood; and she was
still under the impression that many of her wrongs were known by herself
alone, and that his character had suffered but little in the eyes of the
world.

There was one person, however, from whom she had not been able to hide
these wrongs, and that was her child;--her only child. There had been
two other babies, dead at their birth or immediately after, but Geoff
was the only one who had lived, her constant companion, counsellor, and
aid. At eight years old! Those who had never known what a child can be
at that age, when thus entrusted with the perilous deposit of the family
secrets, and elevated to the post which his father ought but did not
care to fill, were apt to think little Geoff's development unnatural;
and others thought, with reason, that it was bad for the little fellow
to be so constantly with his mother, and it was said among the Markland
relations that as he was now growing a great boy he ought to be sent
to school Poor little Geoff! He was not a great boy, nor ever would
be. He was small, _chetif_, unbeautiful; a little sandy-haired,
sandy-complexioned, insignificant boy, with no features to speak of and
no stamina, short for his age and of uncertain health, which had indeed
been the first reason of that constant association with his mother which
was supposed to be so bad for him. During the first years of his life,
which had been broken by continual illness, it was only her perpetual
care that kept him alive at all. She had never left him, never given up
the charge of him to any one; watched him by night and lived with him
by day. His careless father would sometimes say, in one of those brags
which show a heart of shame even in the breast of the vicious, that if
he had not left her so much to herself, if he had dragged her about into
society, as so many men did their wives, she never would have kept her
boy; and perhaps there was some truth in it. While he pursued his
pleasures in regions where no wife could accompany him, she was free to
devote all her life, and to find out every new expedient that skill or
science had thought of to lengthen out the child's feeble days, and to
gain time to make a cure possible. He would never be very strong was the
verdict now, but with care he would live: and it was she who had over
again breathed life into him. This made the tie a double one; not out of
gratitude, for the child knew of no such secondary sentiment, but out o