This elder daughter had undergone a shipwreck; but clear proof that she had not been worsted was in the unclouded liveliness of the younger one gazing forward.  Imaginative creatures who are courageous will never be lopped of the hopeful portion of their days by personal misfortune.  Carinthia could animate both; it would have been a hurt done to a living human soul had she suffered the younger self to run overcast.  Only, the gazing forward had become interdicted to her experienced self.  Nor could she vision a future having any horizon for her child.  She saw it in bleak squares, and snuggled him between dangers weathered and dangers apprehended.

The conviction that her husband hated her had sunk into her nature.  Hating the mother, he would not love her boy.  He was her boy, and strangely bestowed, not beautifully to be remembered rapturously or gratefully, and with deep love of the father.  She felt the wound recollection dealt her.  But the boy was her one treasure, and no treasure to her husband.  They were burdens, and the heir of his House, child of a hated mother, was under perpetual menace from an unscrupulous tyrannical man.  The dread and antagonism were first aroused by the birth of her child.  She had not known while bearing him her present acute sensation of the hunted flying and at bay.  Previously, she could say:  I did wrong here; I did wrong there.  Distrust had brought the state of war, which allows not of the wasting of our powers in confessions.

Her husband fed her and he clothed her; the limitation of his bounty was sharply outlined.  Sure of her rectitude, a stranger to the world, she was not very sensible of dishonour done to her name.  It happened at times that her father inquired of her how things were going with his little Carin; and then revolt sprang up and answered on his behalf rather fiercely.  She was, however, prepared for any treaty including forgiveness, if she could be at peace in regard to her boy, and have an income of some help to her brother.  Chillon was harassed on all sides; she stood incapable of aiding; so foolishly feeble in the shadow of her immense longing to strive for him, that she could think her husband had purposely lamed her with an infant.  Her love of her brother, now the one man she loved, laid her insufficiency on the rack and tortured imbecile cries from it.

On the contrary, her strange husband had blest her with an infant.  Everything was pardonable to him if he left her boy untouched in the mother’s charge.  Much alone as she was, she raised the dead to pet and cherish her boy.  Chillon had seen him and praised him.  Mrs. Owain Wythan, her neighbour over a hill, praised him above all babes on earth, poor childless woman!