Naturally, the news was disquieting to Jane.
The hope, however, was left her, that the stepmother
might care as little for the child as did the father,
and that so, for some years at least, he might be left
to her. It was a terrible thought to the loving
woman that they might be parted; a more terrible thought
that her baby might become a man like his father.
Of all horrors to a decent woman, a bad man must be
the worst! If by her death she could have left
the child her hatred of evil, Jane would have willingly
died: she loved her husband, but her sister’s
boy was in danger!
STEPMOTHER AND NURSE.
The rumour of sir Wilton’s marriage was, as
rumour seldom is, correct. Before the year was
out, lady Ann Hardy, sister to the earl of Torpavy,
representing an old family with a drop or two of very
bad blood in it, became lady Ann Lestrange How much
love there may have been in the affair, it is unnecessary
to inquire, seeing the baronet was what he was, and
the lady understood the what pretty well.
She might have preferred a husband not so much what
sir Wilton was, but she was nine-and-twenty, and her
brother was poor. She said to herself, I suppose,
that she might as well as another undertake his reform:
some one must! and married him. She had not much
of a trousseau, but was gorgeously attired for the
wedding. It is true she had to return to the earl
three-fourths of the jewels she wore; but they were
family jewels, and why should she not have some good
of them? She started with fifty pounds of her
own in her pocket, and a demeanour in her person equal
to fifty millions. When they arrived at Mortgrange,
the moon was indeed still in the sky, but the honey-pot,
to judge by the appearance of the twain, was empty:
twain they were, and twain would be. The man
wore a look of careless all-rightness, tinged with
an expression of indifferent triumph: he had what
he wanted; what his lady might think of her side of
the bargain, he neither thought nor cared. As
to the woman, let her reflections be what they might,
not a soul would come to the knowledge of them.
Whatever it was to others, her pale, handsome face
was never false to herself, never betrayed what she
was thinking, never broke the shallow surface of its
frozen dignity. Will any man ever know how a
woman of ordinary decency feels after selling herself?
I find the thing hardly safe to ponder. No trace,
no shadow of disappointment clouded the countenance
of lady Ann that sultry summer afternoon as she drove
up the treeless avenue. The education she had
received—and education in the worst sense
it was! for it had brought out the worst in her—had
rendered her less than human. The form of her
earthly presence had been trained to a fashionable
perfection; her nature had not been left unaided in
its reversion toward the vague animal type from which
it was developed: in the curve of her thin lips
as they prepared to smile, one could discern the veiled
snarl and bite. Her eyes were grey, her eyebrows
dark; her complexion was a clear fair, her nose perfect,
except for a sharp pinch at the end of the bone; her
nostrils were thin but motionless; her chin was defective,
and her throat as slender as her horrible waist; her
hands and feet were large even for “her tall
personage.”
