Now, whether it was the soothing influence of that belief, or whether Mrs. Nevill Tyson, the mystic of a moment, found help in the gray eyes of the mother of God when Nevill had pointed out their beauty, pointed out, too, the paradox of the divine hands pressing the human breasts for the milk of life, she revived so far as to take, or seem to take, an interest in her son.  She indulged in no ecstasies of maternal passion; but as she nursed the little creature, her face began to show a serene half-ruminant, half-spiritual content.

He was very tiny, tinier than any baby she had ever seen, as well he might be considering that he had come into the world full seven weeks before his time; his skin was very red; his eyes were very small, but even they looked too large for his ridiculous face; his fingers were fine, like little claws; and his hands—­she could hardly feel their feeble kneading of her breast.  He was not at all a pretty baby, but he was very light to hold.

Tyson had not the least objection to Stanistreet or Sir Peter and the rest of them, they were welcome to stare at his wife as much as they pleased; but he was insanely jealous of this minute masculine thing that claimed so much of her attention.  He began to have a positive dislike to seeing her with the child.  There was a strain of morbid sensibility in his nature, and what was beautiful to him in a Botticelli Madonna, properly painted and framed, was not beautiful—­to him—­in Mrs. Nevill Tyson.  He had the sentiment of the thing, as I said, but the thing itself, the flesh and blood of it, was altogether too much for his fastidious nerves.  And yet once or twice he had seen her turn away from him, clutching hastily at the open bodice of her gown; once she had started up and left the room when he came into it; and, curious contradiction that he was, it had hurt him indescribably.  He thought he recognized in these demonstrations a prouder instinct than feminine false shame.  It was as if she had tried to hide from him some sacred thing—­as if she had risen up in her indignation to guard the portals of her soul.  To be sure he was in no mood just then for entering sanctuaries; but for all that he did not like to have the door slammed in his face.

Thank heaven, the worst had not happened.  The little creature’s volatile beauty fluttered back to her from time to time; there was a purified transparent quality in it that had been wanting before.  It had still the trick of fluctuating, vanishing, as if it had caught something of her soul’s caprice; but while it was there Mrs. Nevill Tyson was a more beautiful woman than she had been before.  Some men might have preferred this divine uncertainty to a more monotonous prettiness.  Tyson was not one of these.

One afternoon, about a fortnight after his return from town, he found her sitting in the library with “the animal,” as he called his son.  There had been a sound of singing, but it ceased as he came in.  The child’s shawl was lying on the floor; he picked it up and pitched it to the other end of the room.  Then he came up to her and scanned her face closely.