“Be quiet, please, and get done and go away,” cried Kate. “You will make me ill again, if you don’t mind.”

And then, considerably ruffled and put out, she turned her head to the window. Mrs Mitford had scrupulously kept “the gentlemen"—her husband and her son—out of the flower-garden, on which Kate’s windows looked. She did not think a young lady in a dressing-gown a fit spectacle for any eyes but her own; but Kate was almost well, and her hostess had relaxed a little. As she looked out now she saw through the venetian blinds two figures in the distance walking slowly along a sheltered{36} walk. It could only be John whom his mother was leading on in that way. Her head was almost resting against his arm as she looked up and talked to him. She leant upon him with that pleasant sense of support and help which makes weakness sweet; there was even in her attitude a something which Kate perceived dimly by instinct, but could not have put in words; that delicious sense of surprise, and secret, sacred, humorous consciousness of the wonder there was in it—the sweet jest of being thus supported by her baby, her child, he whom she had carried in her arms—was it yesterday?—which a man’s mother enjoys privately all to herself. Somehow a little envy stole over Kate as she looked at them. She was very fond of her father; but yet it was not such happiness to be with him as it was for this other woman to be with her boy. The young creature thirsting for everything that was sweetest in life would have liked to have that too. To be sure she could not be John’s mother, or anybody’s mother, and would have laughed with inextinguishable laughter at herself for the thought, had she realised it. But still {37}she envied Mrs Mitford, feeling that kind woman to have thus appropriated a joy beyond her reach—and what do women want with joys at that age? Should not all be concentrated in one sweetest draught for the rose lips, so dewy and soft with youth? Kate would have repudiated such a sentiment, of course; and yet this was what breathed unconsciously in her heart. She went to bed with a little spiteful feeling against Mrs Mitford. Had not she made a clergyman of her boy on purpose to spite Kate? If he had been a gravedigger his mother would loved him just the same; it would have made no difference to her. If he had been ugly, and weakly, and half his size, his mother would have liked him quite as well; which were all so many offences against Kate, and evidences of her inferiority. She wanted to have her own delights and the other woman’s delights too. She wanted to be young and to be old; to have a lover’s adoration and a son’s worship, and every other variety that love can take. It so spited her that she cried when she went 

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