being town's talk, Christian already knew; more she had never
inquired, not even when she was engaged to him. Nor did Dr. Grey
volunteer any information. The strongest and most soothing part of his
influence over her was his exceeding silence. He had never troubled
her with any great demonstrations, nor frightened her with
questionings. From the time of their engagement he had seemed to take
every thing for granted, and to treat her tenderly, almost reverently,
without fuss or parade, yet with the consideration due from a man to his
future wife; so much so that she had hardly missed, what, indeed, in
her simplicity she hardly expected, the attention usually paid to an
affianced bride from the relatives of her intended. Dr. Grey had only
two, his own sister and his late wife's. These ladies, Miss Gascoigne
and Miss Grey, had neither called upon nor taken the least notice of
Miss Oakley. But Miss Oakley--if she thought about the matter at all--
ascribed it to a fact well recognized in Avonsbridge, as in most
University towns, that one might as soon expect the skies to fall as for a
college lady to cross, save for purely business purposes, the threshold
of a High Street tradesman. The same cause, she concluded, made
them absent from her wedding; and when Dr. Grey had said simply, "I
shall desire my sisters to send the children," Christian had inquired no
farther. Only for a second, hanging on the brink of this first meeting
with the children--her husband's children, hers that were to be--did her
heart fail her, and then she came forward to meet the little group.

Letitia and Arthur were thin, prim-looking, rather plain children; but
Oliver was the very picture of a father's darling, a boy that any
childless man would bitterly covet, any childless woman crave and
yearn for, with a longing that women alone can understand; a child
who, beautiful as most childhood is, had a beauty you rarely see--
bright, frank, merry, bold; half a Bacchus and half a Cupid, he was a
perfect image of the Golden Age. Though three years old, he was
evidently still "the baby," and rode on his father's shoulder with a
glorious tyranny charming to behold.

"Who's that?" said he, pointing his fat fingers and shaking his curls that
undulated like billows of gold.

"Papa, who's that?"

Hardly could there have been put by anyone a more difficult question.
Dr. Grey did not answer, but avoided it, taking the whole three to
Christian's sid