A great terror came into her mind at that thought. What would
her husband say to her if he came to claim his boy, and found him dead? For
the first time since she had left him--triumphant in the thought of having
secured this treasure--the fact that the boy belonged to him, as well as to
herself, came fully home to her. From the day of the baby's birth she had
been in the habit of thinking of him as her own--hers by a right divine
almost--of putting his father out of the question, as it were--only
just tolerating to behold that doating father's fond looks and
caresses--watching all communion between those two with a lurking jealousy.
Now all at once she began to feel what a sacred bond there was between the
father and son, and how awful a thing it would be, if Daniel Granger should
find his darling dead. Might he not denounce her as the chief cause of his
boy's death? Those hurried journeys by land and sea--that rough shifting to
and fro of the pampered son and heir, whose little life until that time
had been surrounded with such luxurious indulgences, so guarded from the
faintest waft of discomfort--who should say that these things had not
jeopardised the precious creature? And out of her sin had this arisen. In
that dread hour by her darling's sick-bed, what unutterably odious
colours did her flirtation with George Fairfax assume--her dalliance with
temptation, her weak hankering after that forbidden society! She saw, as
women do see in that clear after-light which comes with remorse, all the
guilt and all the hatefulness of her sin.
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