“From the period of this communication, Melmoth’s tenderness for his wife visibly increased.
“Heaven only knows the source of that wild fondness with which he contemplated her, and in which was still mingled something of ferocity. His warm look seemed like the glow of a sultry summer day, whose heat announces a storm, and compels us by its burning oppression, to look to the storm almost for relief.
“It is not impossible that he looked to some future object of his fearful experiment--and a being so perfectly in his power as his own child, might have appeared to him fatally fitted for his purpose--the quantum of misery, too, necessary to qualify the probationer, it was always in his own power to inflict. Whatever was his motive, he assumed as much tenderness as it was possible for him to assume, and spoke of the approaching event with the anxious interest of a human father.
“Soothed by his altered manner, Isidora bore with silent sufferance the burden of her situation, with all its painful accompaniments of indisposition and dejection, aggravated by hourly fear and mysterious secresy. She hoped he would at length reward her by an open and honourable declaration, but this hope was expressed only in her patient smiles. The hour approached fast, and fearful and indefinite apprehensions began to overshadow her mind, relative to the fate of the infant about to be born under circumstances so mysterious.
“At his next nightly visit, Melmoth found her in tears.
“Alas!” said she in answer to his abrupt inquiry, and brief attempt at consolation, “How many causes have I for tears--and how few have I shed? If you would have them wiped away, be assured it is only your hand can do it. I feel,” she added, “that this event will be fatal to me--I know I shall not live to see my child--I demand from you the only promise that can support me even under this conviction”--Melmoth interrupted her by the assurance, that these apprehensions were the inseparable concomitants of her situation, and that many mothers, surrounded by a numerous offspring, smiled as they recollected their fears that the birth of each would be fatal to them.