I am not going to be hard on her. To some women a bitterer thing than not
to be loved is not to be allowed to love. And when two women insist on
loving the same man, the despised one is naturally skeptical as to the
strength and purity and eternity of the other's feelings. "She never
loved him!" is the heart's consolation to the lucid brain reiterating "He
never loved me!" I did not say that Miss Batchelor loved Tyson.
So the baby was weaned. He did not howl under the process so much as his
father expected. He lost his cheerful red hue and grew thin; he was
indifferent to things around him, so that people thought poorly of his
intelligence, and the nurse shook her head and said it was a "bad sign
when they took no notice." Gradually, very gradually, his features
settled into an expression of disillusionment, curious in one so young.
Perhaps he bore in his blood reminiscences, forebodings of that wonderful
and terrible world he had been in such a hurry to enter. He was Tyson's
son and heir.
And that other baby, Mrs. Nevill Tyson, so violently weaned from the joy
of motherhood, she too grew pale and thin; she too was indifferent to
things around her, and she took very little notice of her son.
By a strange and unfortunate coincidence Captain Stanistreet had not been
seen in Drayton for the space of five months; and coupling this fact with
Mrs. Nevill Tyson's altered looks, the logical mind of Drayton Parva drew
its own conclusions.