Cast Adrift | Page 5

sweetness of which she had begun to feel when
she first called for the baby they had not permitted to rest, even for an
instant, on her bosom, was now flooding her heart. Two months! If that
were so, what of the baby? To be submissive was impossible.
Starting up half wildly, a vague terror in her face, she cried, piteously,
"Oh, mother, bring me my baby. I shall die if you do not!"
"Your baby is in heaven," said Mrs. Dinneford, softening her voice to a
tone of tender regret.
Edith caught her breath, grew very white, and then, with a low, wailing
cry that sent a shiver through Mrs. Dinneford's heart, fell back, to all
appearance dead.
The mother did not call for help, but sat by the bedside of her daughter,
and waited for the issue of this new struggle between life and death.

There was no visible excitement, but her mouth was closely set and her
cold blue eyes fixed in a kind of vacant stare.
Edith was Mrs. Dinneford's only child, and she had loved her with the
strong, selfish love of a worldly and ambitious woman. In her own
marriage she had not consulted her heart. Mr. Dinneford's social
position and wealth were to her far more than his personal endowments.
She would have rejected him without a quicker pulse-beat if these had
been all he had to offer. He was disappointed, she was not. Strong,
self-asserting, yet politic, Mrs Dinneford managed her good husband
about as she pleased in all external matters, and left him to the free
enjoyment of his personal tastes, preferences and friendships. The
house they lived in, the furniture it contained, the style and equipage
assumed by the family, were all of her choice, Mr. Dinneford giving
merely a half-constrained or half-indifferent consent. He had learned,
by painful and sometimes. humiliating experience, that any contest
with Mrs. Helen Dinneford upon which he might enter was sure to end
in his defeat.
He was a man of fine moral and intellectual qualities. His wealth gave
him leisure, and his tastes, feelings and habits of thought drew him into
the society of some of the best men in the city where he lived--best in
the true meaning of that word. In all enlightened social reform
movements you would be sure of finding Mr. Howard Dinneford. He
was an active and efficient member in many boards of public charity,
and highly esteemed in them all for his enlightened philanthropy and
sound judgment. Everywhere but at home he was strong and influential;
there he was weak, submissive and of little account. He had long ago
accepted the situation, making a virtue of necessity. A different
man--one of stronger will and a more imperious spirit--would have held
his own, even though it wrought bitterness and sorrow. But Mr.
Dinneford's aversion to strife, and gentleness toward every one, held
him away from conflict, and so his home was at least tranquil.
Mrs. Dinneford had her own way, and so long as her husband made no
strong opposition to that way all was peaceful.
For Edith, their only child, who was more like her father than her
mother, Mr. Dinneford had the tenderest regard. The well-springs of
love, choked up so soon after his marriage, were opened freely toward
his daughter, and he lived in her a new, sweet and satisfying life. The

mother was often jealous of her husband's demonstrative tenderness for
Edith. A yearning instinct of womanhood, long repressed by
worldliness and a mean social ambition, made her crave at times the
love she had cast away, and then her cup of life was very bitter. But
fear of Mr. Dinneford's influence over Edith was stronger than any
jealousy of his love. She had high views for her daughter. In her own
marriage she had set aside all considerations but those of social rank.
She had made it a stepping-stone to a higher place in society than the
one to which she was born. Still, above them stood many millionnaire
families, living in palace-homes, and through her daughter she meant to
rise into one of them. It mattered not for the personal quality of the
scion of the house; he might be as coarse and common as his father
before him, or weak, mean, selfish, and debased by sensual indulgence.
This was of little account. To lift Edith to the higher social level was
the all in all of Mrs. Dinneford's ambition.
But Mr. Dinneford taught Edith a nobler life-lesson than this, gave her
better views of wedlock, pictured for her loving heart the bliss of a true
marriage, sighing often as he did so, but unconsciously, at the lost
fruition of his own sweet hopes. He was careful to do this only when
alone with