On the afternoon of that event, Lucy was sitting on a rush-covered bank, happily dreaming of the time when this estate of marsh and sandhill would be their own. Here, she thought complacently, watching the wheeling birds, they would settle down for life, and partings and war scares would be nightmares of the past. She would have her rose garden, Hector his shooting, and later, she hoped, a seat in the House, and perhaps in time they might—oh Heaven, how she prayed for it—be given a son. Here Lucy’s smile died and the blue eyes clouded. A son, a strong, straight-limbed boy, not like Ruby; and at the thought of her, their only child, a sudden passionate feeling of revolt came over Lucy and her eyes filled with angry tears.
"Why," she thought bitterly, "should such a thing have happened to me? I was so looking forward to her coming too, and was so very very careful. It was not my fault, or that of my ancestry; we have always been strong and healthy. Oh, my God, how am I to tell him? I was mad to keep it from him, but it looked so awful in a letter. What will he say when he sees her—he so intolerant of weakness and disliking children at any time? And all these years I expect he’s been wondering what she’s like, picturing her as a round, rosy child, who’ll want to romp with him and pull his hair. Ruby, romping! Oh," a sudden revulsion of feeling coming over her, "what a brute I am, wicked and unnatural. It’s not her fault, poor mite; and if I, her mother, run her down, who’s to take her part? And perhaps Hector won’t take it so hardly; he’ll be kind to her, even if he can’t love her—Hector could never be anything else. And he won’t see much of her; she’ll be in her nursery all day; this cold would kill her at once, poor child."
With a sigh, she rose from the bank and made her way back to the house, when for the hundredth time that day she ran through the preparations for her husband’s coming, and then, after a short visit to the nursery, went to her room to dress. The sudden chiming of the clock startled her, and hurrying over the last stages of her toilet she flew downstairs, impatiently calling for the pony-cart, though it was not due for a quarter of an hour. Rapidly her anxiety was becoming a fever from waiting when at length the trap appeared. Hastily mounting, she took the reins, and, whipping up the white pony, sent him along at his best pace to the station.