Never was a more undesired or unwelcome child born than her daughter
Alice, and the helpless infant shared with its father the resentful
anger which dominated her unwilling mother the wretched months before
its advent into earth life.
To be let alone and allowed to follow her own whims and desires, and
never to be crossed in any wish, was all Mrs Cheney asked of her
husband.
This role was one he had very willingly permitted her to pursue,
since with every passing week and month he found less and less to win
or bind him to his wife. Wretched as this condition of life was, it
might at least have settled into a monotonous calm, undisturbed by
strife, but for the molesting "sympathy" of the Baroness.
"Poor thing, here you are alone again," she would say on entering the
house where Mabel lounged or lolled, quite content with her situation
until the tone and words of her stepmother aroused a resentful
consciousness of being neglected. Again the Baroness would say:
"I do think you are such a brave little darling to carry so smiling a
face about with all you have to endure." Or, "Very few wives would
bear what you bear and hide every vestige of unhappiness from the
world. You are a wonderful and admirable character in my eyes." Or,
"It seems so strange that your husband does not adore you--but men
are blind to the best qualities in women like you.
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