of good strong love between her and her husband; and though her
training might not have been the best for a clergyman's wife, there
was substance enough in both to shake down together in time.

But it was Raymond who made her uneasy--Raymond, who ever since his
father's death had been more than all her other sons to her. She
had armed herself against the pang of not being first with him, and
now she was full of vague anxiety at the sense that she still held
her old position. Had he not sat all the evening in his own place
by her sofa, as if it were the very kernel of home and of repose?
And whenever a sense of duty prompted her to suggest fetching his
wife, had he not lingered, and gone on talking? It was indeed of
Cecil; but how would she have liked his father, at the honeymoon's
end, to prefer talking of her to talking with her? "She has been
most carefully brought up, and is very intelligent and industrious,"
said Raymond. His mother could not help wondering whether a Roman
son might not thus have described a highly accomplished Greek slave,
just brought home for his mother's use.




CHAPTER III
Parish Explorations


A cry more tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly:
Judge, when you hear.--But, soft; what nymphs are these?