He was entirely mistaken, however; Sylvia, with all her apparent frankness, kept her deep sorrows to herself.  She never mentioned her father’s name, though he was continually present to her mind.  Nor did she speak of Kinraid to human being, though, for his sake, her voice softened when, by chance, she spoke to a passing sailor; and for his sake her eyes lingered on such men longer than on others, trying to discover in them something of the old familiar gait; and partly for his dead sake, and partly because of the freedom of the outlook and the freshness of the air, she was glad occasionally to escape from the comfortable imprisonment of her ‘parlour’, and the close streets around the market-place, and to mount the cliffs and sit on the turf, gazing abroad over the wide still expanse of the open sea; for, at that height, even breaking waves only looked like broken lines of white foam on the blue watery plain.

She did not want any companion on these rambles, which had somewhat of the delight of stolen pleasures; for all the other respectable matrons and town-dwellers whom she knew were content to have always a business object for their walk, or else to stop at home in their own households; and Sylvia was rather ashamed of her own yearnings for solitude and open air, and the sight and sound of the mother-like sea.  She used to take off her hat, and sit there, her hands clasping her knees, the salt air lifting her bright curls, gazing at the distant horizon over the sea, in a sad dreaminess of thought; if she had been asked on what she meditated, she could not have told you.

But, by-and-by, the time came when she was a prisoner in the house; a prisoner in her room, lying in bed with a little baby by her side—­her child, Philip’s child.  His pride, his delight knew no bounds; this was a new fast tie between them; this would reconcile her to the kind of life that, with all its respectability and comfort, was so different from what she had lived before, and which Philip had often perceived that she felt to be dull and restraining.  He already began to trace in the little girl, only a few days old, the lovely curves that he knew so well by heart in the mother’s face.  Sylvia, too, pale, still, and weak, was very happy; yes, really happy for the first time since her irrevocable marriage.  For its irrevocableness had weighed much upon her with a sense of dull hopelessness; she felt all Philip’s kindness, she was grateful to him for his tender regard towards her mother, she was learning to love him as well as to like and respect him.  She did not know what else she could have done but marry so true a friend, and she and her mother so friendless; but, at the same time, it was like lead on her morning spirits when she awoke and remembered that the decision was made, the dead was done, the choice taken which comes to most people but once in their lives.  Now the little baby came in upon this state of mind like a ray of sunlight into a gloomy room.