This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By Gilbert Parker
Lali's recovery was not rapid. A change had come upon her. With thatstrange ride had gone the last strong flicker of the desire for savagelife in her. She knew now the position she held towards her husband:that he had never loved her; that she was only an instrument for unworthyretaliation. So soon as she could speak after her accident, she toldthem that they must not write to him and tell him of it. She also madethem promise that they would give him no news of her at all, save thatshe was well. They could not refuse to promise; they felt she had theright to demand much more than that. They had begun to care for her forherself, and when the months went by, and one day there was a hush abouther room, and anxiety, and then relief, in the faces of all, they came tocare for her still more for the sake of her child.
As the weeks passed, the fair-haired child grew more and more like hisfather; but if Lali thought of her husband they never knew it by anythingshe said, for she would not speak of him. She also made them promisethat they would not write to him of the child's birth. Richard, with hissense of justice, and knowing how much the woman had been wronged, saidthat in all this she had done quite right; that Frank, if he had done hisduty after marrying her, should have come with her. And because they allfelt that Richard had been her best friend as well as their own, theycalled the child after him. This also was Lali's wish. Coincident withher motherhood there came to Lali a new purpose. She had not lived withthe Armours without absorbing some of their fine social sense anddignity. This, added to the native instinct of pride in her, gave her anew ambition. As hour by hour her child grew dear to her, so hour byhour her husband grew away from her. She schooled herself against him.—At times she thought she hated him. She felt she could never forgivehim, but she would prove to him that it was she who had made the mistakeof her life in marrying him; that she had been wronged, not he; and thathis sin would face him with reproach and punishment one day. Richard'sprophecy was likely to come true: she would defeat very perfectly indeedFrank's intentions. After the child was born, so soon as she was able,she renewed her studies with Richard and Mrs. Armour. She read everymorning for hours; she rode; she practised all those graceful arts of thetoilet which belong to the social convention; she showed an unexpectedfaculty for singing, and practised it faithfully; and she begged Mrs.Armour and Marion to correct her at every point where correction seemednecessary. When the child was two years old, they all went to London,something against Lali's personal feelings, but quite in accord with whatshe felt her duty.
Richard was left behind at Greyhope. For the first time in eighteenmonths he was alone with his old quiet duties and recreations. Duringthat time he had not neglected his pensioners,—his poor, sick, halt, andblind, but a deeper, larger interest had come into his life in the personof Lali. During all that time she had seldom been out of his sight,never