THE INDISSOLUBLE LINK.
‘Child of my love! Essence of all things fair,
Sweet outcome of my happy, hopeful youth,
Sweet mem’ry of thy father’s passionate truth,
Come nearer; let me feel that thou art there.
Give me thy hand--’twas thus I held his own;
Look in my eyes--’twas thus I gaz’d in his;
Kiss me for him--one fervent, long-drawn kiss--
And tell me that we part for earth alone.’
How will it be possible to adequately describe Fenella’s feelings
at this juncture, so as to make those who read of them judge her
leniently? No _man_ could do it; no man could even understand the
emotions that passed through her mind, or enter into the passion that
actuated her conduct. A man must stand on one side and be dumb. And
neither could a woman, unless she had been a mother, and received back
her child, as it were, from the dead; even a woman must have passed
through similar circumstances before she could comprehend the difficult
position in which Fenella was placed. Picture her wild surprise on
hearing that the child of her love--the child of the man whom she could
not forget--still lived, and was dependent on her; that somewhere in
this wide world it stretched tiny arms to the empty air, yearning for a
mother’s tenderness; and then think of the impossibility of her telling
the secret to any one--of the impossibility of her having the infant
with her at all unless she stooped to a deception which seemed innocent
beside the crime of disowning it. Once made aware of its existence,
Fenella could not close her eyes to her responsibility. She could not
have done it under any circumstances, for her heart was that of a true
mother, and she would have gone forth into the world, if needful, with
her baby in her arms, and supported it by the most menial of labour,
sooner than have confided it any longer to the care of strangers.
But there was another motive working in her breast, a motive for which
the world (who embraces coroneted courtesans) will be the most ready to
condemn her,--she loved the father of her child with every fibre of her
heart. It was her greatest sin, this impossibility to be faithless and
forget. Let it be written down against her. This is not the history of
a saint. It only professes to be the record of an erring woman’s life.
But Fenella did not intend at first to follow Bennett’s suggestion
in all its details. It is questionable, indeed, if she ever intended
to do so, for she was true by nature (as has already been pointed
out), and it was only the greater passion fighting against the lesser
that made her untrue to her nature now. It is the same with all of
us when brought face to face with the greatest difficulties of our
lives--the master-passion (whichever it may be) prevails. And Fenella’s
master-passion--whether it demonstrated itself in one phase or
another--was love.
When the wonder and the surprise of the revelation had somewhat
subsided--when she had heard every detail that the nurse could give
her of the circumstances under which her infant had been placed in
the charge of Martha Bennett, and was thoroughly convinced that there
was a living being dependent upon her alone for care and support and
affection in the future, then all the mother’s love came welling forth,
and Fenella felt as if she could not rest until she held her child in
her arms.
Bennett did not fail to improve the occasion. Her conscience had sorely
upbraided her for taking part in the deception even from the beginning,
but she had been a tool in the hands of Mrs Barrington, and had simply
done as her mistress commanded her. But the spell was broken now; the
magnetic chain which the frivolous woman of fashion seemed to have
woven about the will of her dependant was snapt in two, and Eliza
Bennett could once more think and speak for herself. She impressed the
truth on Lady Conroy that, if she was ever to act in the matter, it
must be then; that next year, even next month, might be too late; and
that it would give her incalculable trouble, and the child incalculable
disadvantages (not only now, but in the future), if she were not
brought up by her side.
‘Just think what she may be, fifteen or twenty years hence, my lady.
Why, the very thought makes me shudder! Even if you was to give her
the best of homes and education, where is she to go when she’s a grown
lady?--for a lady she is, my dear, and nothing can’t unmake her that.
And for my part, it seems a moral duty to me that you should have her
home; and, if I may make so bold as to say it, God Almighty seems to
have paved the way for you Himself.’
‘I intend to reclaim her, Bennett; don’t have any fear of that. Do you
think I could be so cruel and cowardly as to leave my own little child,
that I brought into the world, to grow up without knowing that I am her
mother?’ exclaimed Fenella. ‘Oh no! It is only the _means_ of doing it
that perplexes me. It can never be justifiable to deceive, you know.
And if they should ever find it out--’
‘Well, my dear, I shouldn’t worry myself about that matter now; and you
can do as you think best with respect to Sir Gilbert afterwards. There
can never be no call for you to tell Lady Marjoram, surely.’
‘Oh no, no!’
‘Take a week or two to think over it,’ suggested the servant; ‘second
thoughts is always best. And meanwhile I can fetch the little one,
that you may have a look at her.’
Fenella’s eyes sparkled with a sudden joy.
‘But when, Bennett--_when_? How soon can you go?’
‘You won’t have her _here_, Miss Fenella,’ said the woman dubiously.
‘I’ll do just what you think best.’
‘I’d like you to move farther on, my dear--to some place where you
are not likely to meet any of your fine friends; and then when you’re
settled, I’ll go over quietly and bring the child back with me.’
‘We will go to St Pré,’ said Lady Conroy; ‘there is no one there at
this time of the year.’
She was burning with anxiety to clasp her baby in her arms. She would
have stripped herself of every earthly possession to attain her object.
She could think of nothing else until it was accomplished.
Yet the time which Fenella passed alone in the little _auberge_ of St
Pré, during the two or three days that her servant was necessarily
absent in England, was one of great perplexity to her. A dozen plans
for telling the truth, and yet keeping her first-born by her side,
darted into her mind, and had to be as summarily rejected. Her husband
knew every particular of her former history--of _that_ she felt
certain--it had never entered her head for a moment that it could
be otherwise; but, of course, Mrs Barrington had told him the same
falsehood she did to herself, and he believed the baby to be dead.
_What_ would he say if he were told it lived? Would he not order her
never to see it again, never to speak of it--to bury the fact of its
existence in oblivion, as he had desired her to bury the remembrance of
its birth? And Fenella felt this was what she could not do. A chord had
been struck in her breast which vibrated through her whole body. Her
child lived! The life that was one with hers had not been quenched, and
whilst it existed they must exist together. Yet she could not make up
her mind what to do, and she put the question from her as something to
be settled in the future. But she did not write to announce the death
of little Valeria to Lady Marjoram, and so the first thread was woven
of the net in which her life was to become entangled.
On the evening on which she had been led to expect Bennett back again
from Ines-cedwyn, Lady Conroy behaved like a wild creature. Her
suspense, her agitation, her anxiety were so extreme, that she was
compelled to go and lock herself into her own room, that she might be
able to pace the floor, and laugh, and cry, and talk to herself, as she
felt inclined, without the fear of making the inmates of the _auberge_
say she had gone mad. At last, after hours of restless expectation,
Fenella heard a bustle on the stairs, accompanied by a fretful cry. She
threw open her bedroom door, and stood panting on the threshold.
‘Give her to me!’ she cried impetuously, as Bennett approached with a
bundle in her arms.
‘Oh, my lady, be careful! You’ll frighten the child to death.’
But Fenella was not in a condition to listen to any advice. She hastily
tore open the shawl that enveloped the infant, and met the gaze of two
startled blue eyes, shaded by dark lashes; a little white face, hardly
bigger than that of the child she had just lost, surrounded by rings
of silky brown hair; and a sad drooping mouth that had just puckered
itself up for another cry. She pounced upon the baby like a tigress on
its prey, and clasped her vehemently to her bosom.
‘Take care, my dear; pray take care,’ repeated the servant fearfully.
‘Don’t forget she’s just come off a long journey, and everything is
strange to her.’
But the mother had got the child’s face close to her own; she saw
nothing but the child--she heard nothing but the throbbing of her own
heart beneath which God had called it into being.
‘_Baby_,’ she murmured, in a soft, tremulous voice; ‘baby, do you know
I am your mother?’
The sweet pathos in her tones attracted the little one’s attention. She
had just been going to cry, but she thought better of it, and smiled
instead.
‘She _knows_ me!’ Fenella cried triumphantly. ‘She recognises me,
nurse. She sees something in my face she has been waiting for.’
‘Bless her heart!’ said Eliza Bennett, with the stereotyped nursery
benediction, ‘she’s been good as gold all the way coming over, and
Martha was finely put out parting with her, I can tell you; but I
said as her mamma had come back from the Injies, and wanted to look
after her herself. And I give her the money you sent, my dear, and she
considered it most handsome, and she hopes that the child’s things
(such as they are) will be found in decent order; but, of course, it’s
little she’s been able to do for her that way, for what your dear
mamma paid her, though ample, didn’t leave much and above over for
clothes. But we’ll soon put that to rights, won’t we, my lady? It’ll be
quite a pleasure to me to dress the little dear in decent things. But
she is a rare little one--ain’t she now?’
Bennett might have gone on talking till doomsday, for Fenella was not
listening to a word she said. Her eyes, dim with unshed tears, were
riveted upon the child, who lay in her arms, passive and contented, as
if she knew where she had got to. Suddenly the blue eyes glistened, the
tiny fingers were stretched upward, and in another moment had firmly
grasped a gold locket which had escaped from the bosom of Fenella’s
dress. The last pledge that Geoffrey Doyne had given her, in token of
his unalterable fidelity, lay in the hands of his child. At that sight
Lady Conroy’s tears fell like rain. She turned her face aside, and hid
it in the cushion of the sofa upon which she was seated.
‘You have been unfaithful to me,’ she murmured inwardly; ‘you left me
without a thought whether I might not be destroyed, body and soul,
by your desertion; but I will not desert your child. Whatever may
happen to me in consequence--whatever I may lose, or give up, or have
to resign, I pledge myself here to redeem as much of _my_ past as
is possible to me, by devoting the rest of my life to the life you
created. O Geoffrey! Geoffrey! Why did you not take mine before you
laid this burden on my soul?’
Bennett perceived that Fenella was weeping, and came at once to the
rescue.
‘Now, my lady, please, we mustn’t have anything of this sort. I shall
be sorry I’ve brought the baby over here, if she’s to be a misery to
you instead of a comfort. Lor’! What has she got now? That there nasty
locket! I thought there was something of that kind in the wind. Now, my
little dear, you please to give that up, and come to Bennett. ’Twould
have been a deal better for your poor mamma if she’d never seen the
trumpery thing, nor the one as give it to her neither. Come, my lady,
let me take her, and you rest yourself on the sofa, whilst I feed her
and put her to bed. She’ll sleep without rocking to-night, I warrant.’
But Fenella would not be parted from her new-found treasure. Together
the women undressed and washed the infant, and put it to sleep in the
nurse’s bed. And late that night, when the inmates of the little hotel
had long retired, and Eliza Bennett thought that her mistress too was
wrapt in slumber, a white-robed figure stole softly to her side, and a
low voice whispered,--
‘Is she sleeping, nurse? Has she taken her food? Are you sure she is
quite comfortable and well?’
‘Bless you, yes! My lady. The dear child’s sleeping like an angel!
Just look at her little face upon the piller. Ain’t she like a little
wax doll--the pretty dear! But do go back to your bed, Miss Fenella,
for you’ll get your death of cold standing about these nasty painted
boards.’
‘I’ll go back directly, nurse; but couldn’t you bring her and lay her
by my side? I think I could go to sleep if I knew that she was there.’
‘Lor’! My dear, you’d never rest with a baby in your bed. It’s
terrible, till you’re used to them.’
‘I think I could--and I would like to try; do wrap a shawl round her
and bring her to me. You don’t know how my heart does ache! I think if
I had my baby next it, it would be a little comfort to me.’
Bennett did not attempt any further remonstrance, but lifting up the
sleeping child, carried it into the next room and laid it by its
mother’s side. And when she crept in again towards the early morning,
to see how they both fared, she found them in the same position and
fast asleep, the infant’s tiny face nestled in Fenella’s bosom. The
servant stood and gazed at them until her eyes filled with tears.
‘Well,’ she thought to herself, ‘if to bring them two together is a
sin, may God forgive me! But I can’t see it. Poor little mite! Don’t
she look as if she’d got home at last? And my sweet young lady, too, is
dreaming a happy dream with that smile upon her lips. May God bless ’em
both! And if any harm comes of it, I’ll work to keep ’em to my life’s
end.’
And Fenella too, with this new legitimate love awakened in her bosom at
the very moment when it felt so empty and so cold, was ready to resign
the world itself, if necessary, sooner than give up her child again.
It seemed to her as if she had never really known what it was to be a
mother until she clasped her in her arms, and before she had regained
possession of her for a week her infant had become her idol. She could
not bear her to go out of her sight; she was always in terror lest
some ill should happen to her; and she spent her days in studying the
tiny features, and watching the development of the tardily awakening
intellect. She was scarcely ever out of her mother’s arms; day after
day Fenella’s tall, lithe figure might be seen traversing the byroads
and field paths around St Pré, with the fragile baby clasped to her
breast; and the affection of the English lady for her little child
was the observation of every one. And yet Fenella was not happy. In
her case the saying, ‘_Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coute_,’ was
eminently true. In delaying to write and announce the death of Sir
Gilbert’s child to Lady Marjoram, she had taken that first step which
she would never be able to retrace; and as day succeeded day, and the
time drew near for her return to London, she felt that she must adopt
Bennett’s suggestion and keep her own counsel, whether she wished it
or not, for there was no possibility of disclosing the truth at that
date.
When May arrived she parted from her child with many tears, and
leaving it at St Pré under the charge of her nurse and a French
_bonne_, travelled to England with her lady’s-maid (a new acquisition
imported from Paris) to spend the London season under the wing of her
sister-in-law.
Lady Marjoram was delighted to receive Lady Conroy, and equally
delighted to hear that she had left the baby behind her.
‘My dear, how sensible and nice you are! One would believe you were
eight-and-twenty instead of eighteen. I can’t tell you how I have been
dreading the advent of your nursery brigade--not, of course, that they
could make any difference to me with my terrible tribe, only I was
afraid you’d be running upstairs to see if the little animal was dead
or alive twenty times a-day, and wanting to stuff it, with its nurse,
on the back seat of the carriage whenever we drove in the park, and all
that sort of thing. So interesting you know, my dear, and so abominably
disagreeable!’
‘I am afraid you must have a very small idea of my common sense,
Janie,’ replied Fenella, colouring. ‘I confess I was very sorry
to leave my little girl behind me, but I thought it best for
her--particularly as we shall be out, I suppose, day and night.’
‘Indeed, we shall, Fenella. This promises to be the gayest season we
have had for years. My engagement list is something terrible to look
at already. By the way, the Culletons are going to have a series of
_tableaux vivants_ and private theatricals at Fotheringay House in June
and July, and I have promised faithfully that you will assist them.
They want the loan of your voice, too, for some amateur concerts. I
hope you have not neglected your singing lately?’
‘No; I have had a piano wherever I went, and practised assiduously,
and I intend to take another course of lessons from Signor Possetrina.
By the way, Janie, I have not yet shown you Gilbert’s last letter. He
seems quite delighted with Sovooranooko, and talks of having me out
there next year to judge of it for myself.’
‘Don’t you believe a word of that, my dear; it’s only a sop for
Cerberus. Bertie has no more idea of having you out to Sovooranooko
than of coming home himself. We had a letter from Lord Laurence by
last mail, and he says Bertie is mad to get into the interior, and
already organising a shooting party to start as soon as the cool
weather commences. He has got the Englishman’s mania on him to “kill
something,” Fenella, and the best thing you can do is to let him tire
himself out. He’ll get a grab from a lion or a squeeze from a bear
some day, and come crying home to you to kiss the place and make it
well; but he won’t come before. And what should you want to go out
to that horrid place for--to lose your complexion and your hair, and
perhaps get the yellow fever, or some pleasantry of that sort? Don’t
you be so silly. You had better stay at home with the baby than do
that.’
‘Oh yes! I don’t want to leave my baby,’ cried the mother, with a
sudden thrill.
‘Well, you couldn’t take her with you, so let’s talk no more about it.
Besides, it is time we went to dress. We have a concert at the Duke of
Doldrum’s at two.’
The next three months were spent by Fenella in a round of dissipation,
during which she distinguished herself in theatricals and at concerts,
and heard her talents talked of as much as her beauty had been the year
before.
But her heart and all her thoughts were at St Pré. She required
_bulletins_ to be sent her daily of the health and well-doing of her
child, and she bought every dainty little garment or expensive toy
she could light upon, to decorate the body, or amuse the mind, of her
absent baby.
Lady Marjoram noticed this almost feverish anxiety and restlessness
on the part of her sister-in-law concerning her child, and laughed at
it. ‘It was very becoming,’ she said patronisingly, and just as it
ought to be, she wished she could get up the same sort of excitement
about her own brats. It gave one such a pretty flush to be anxious, and
one’s eyes looked so quick and bright about the time that the post was
expected.
But for all that, Lady Marjoram did not quite believe in the
genuineness of Fenella’s concern, and she could no more have entered
into her real feelings respecting her child than she could sympathise
with Sir Gilbert’s exultation at bringing down an elephant. The one
sensation was as much a sealed book to her as the other. However, as
soon as the season was over, Lady Conroy flew to the side of her child
again, and shed tears of real joy, because it held out arms of welcome
as soon as it recognised her.
The Earl and Countess of Marjoram were bound for Norway that year, and
as soon as they had left England, Fenella brought her little party
over, and established them in a lovely Devonshire village by the sea,
where she spent all her days upon the beach with the little Valeria in
her arms. For the infant who had been unbaptized when restored to its
mother, had of course to be called by the name of the one whose place
she assumed.
And here it was, whilst yielding herself up to the softening
influence which nature generally exerts on a mind fitted to perceive
and appreciate her beauties, and whilst watching the daily growing
resemblance to her father in the face of her little child, that
Fenella began to have gentler and more generous thoughts of Geoffrey
Doyne. For since the day on which she received the shock of hearing
of his marriage, the remembrance of him had been fraught with torture
to her. He had never come into her mind but to suggest something that
was most cruel and heartless and untrue. She had tried to shut out the
memory even of the time she knew him, as of some horrible dream that to
dwell upon would madden her. But now, as little Valeria’s baby lips met
hers, as she watched her toddle feebly from one spot to another, as she
heard her faltering tongue trying to frame the syllables of ‘_mother_,’
the child’s angel whispered to her thoughts of forgiveness and of
mercy, and from the child’s eyes there beamed a look that softened her
recollection of the past.
In fancy, Fenella saw again the flowery landslip, strewn with fallen
petals--fallen like her hopes! She saw the golden sands, the ruined
bungalow, the stretch of placid sea, and blue unclouded sky; and then
above, beyond them all, in beauty and in pleasantness, the smile, the
look, the tones of Geoffrey Doyne. And she began to make excuses for
him--she, who had called him (and justly) by all sorts of hard and
ugly names, whose life had been ruined by his desertion--she began to
wonder if some dark mystery might not lie at the bottom of his apparent
cruelty; whether he could have been told falsehoods of her, or been
forced into that marriage that broke her heart; whether he might not
believe that she was dead, or had refused ever to see or speak to him
again. A hundred reasons, all equally vague and improbable, floated
through Fenella’s mind as she attempted, in her loving generosity, to
account for as dastardly a piece of cruelty as ever a man employed to
wreck a woman’s life.
She could not satisfy herself. Her own nature was too true to accept
any excuse for his conduct, still less for the silence which preceded
and followed it; yet she tried so hard, ‘_for baby’s sake_,’ she would
say to herself with quivering lips, to make out the father of her child
less undeserving than he was.
But often (after Fenella had been thinking thus for hours) she would
catch her infant in her arms and sob over it in so piteous a manner,
that the little creature would weep with terror. And then Fenella
would soothe it, and kiss it, and sing to it, until it smiled again,
and whisper in its ear that its mother would always love it for its
father’s sake, although he had trampled on her heart as if it had been
the ground beneath his feet.
Meanwhile, the little Valeria grew strong and fat, but still remained
so tiny that Bennett’s prophecies concerning her apparent age seemed
likely to be verified, and when the second London season dawned upon
the world, Fenella ventured to send her with her nurses up to Conroy
Castle, where she remained until her mother could rejoin her.
‘Really, Fenella,’ exclaimed Lady Marjoram, ‘you are getting too
absurdly domestic! Why should you go and bury yourself all alone in
Scotland with that child? Why cannot you spend the autumn at Southfield
with us? I shall be horribly dull without you.’
‘I thought, Janie, that as I had not been at the castle all last year,
and Gilbert talks of returning in the spring, he might consider it my
duty to go and look after the place a little.’
‘My dear girl, what rubbish! Who do you suppose looked after it all
the years before he met you? Bertie was never there, except for the
shooting. He was better employed elsewhere, I can tell you. Now, do
come down to Southfield with me! It will be a perfect charity. And send
for the child and nurses to join you there, as I know you will not
come without her.’
‘No, I will not come without her,’ replied Fenella, smiling; and so
Bennett was written to, and in due course appeared with her baby and
her _aide-de-camp_ at Southfield.
‘And now, pray let us see this wonderful baby,’ exclaimed the Countess,
on the first day as they sat together after dinner. ‘Your devotion to
her is so extraordinary that it has excited my curiosity. I expect a
_rara avis_. Give your orders, Fenella, for Bennett to bring the young
lady down to dessert.’
Lady Conroy looked uneasy.
‘I think you had better not see her now,’ she said; ‘you don’t like
children, and she is very shy with strangers, and will most likely cry.’
‘Never mind! If she cries, we’ll send her back again,’ replied Lady
Marjoram, who always liked to have her own way. ‘I think it is quite
time I made the acquaintance of my niece. Let me see! How old is she?’
‘Eighteen months,’ said Fenella, in a low voice.
‘Quite grown up, I declare,’ laughed her sister-in-law. ‘Send for her
at once. The girls are so precocious now-a-days, that at this rate she
will be married before I see her.’
The order was given, and in a few minutes a tap was heard upon the
dining-room door, and Bennett entering, set down with much pride upon
the carpet a tiny creature, dressed in lace and ribbons, of about two
feet high, who stood the centre of attraction, looking with scared and
wistful eyes upon the strangers.
‘Baby!’ said Fenella, in her sweet, low voice.
The little figure fluttered like a blue-and-white butterfly, and
then with a cry of pleasure tottered to her mother’s side, and laid
her curly head against her knee. Fenella lifted her in her arms, and
pressed her glowing face in the folds of the infant’s frock.
‘What a little fairy,’ cried the Countess. ‘She looks as if she had
just stepped, ready dressed, out of the Soho Bazaar! Marjoram! Why
don’t my children make a rush at me like that? Why do they always hang
back and stick their fingers in their mouths, and their heads in the
nurse’s apron? Look at that child! Stroking Fenella’s face like a grown
being! I should get quite fond of a baby if it showed as much sense as
that.’
‘She has always been with me,’ said Fenella ingenuously.
‘That’s it,’ acquiesced the Earl. ‘Lady Conroy has nursed her child,
and you leave yours to a set of hirelings.’
‘Hold your tongue, Marjoram! You don’t know anything about it. How old
did you say she was, Fenella? Can she talk?’
‘Very little, Janie. She can only say “mother,” and “father,” and
“Bennie.”’
‘And whom does she resemble? Turn her face round, my dear, that I may
see it,’ continued Lady Marjoram.
Fenella grew crimson.
‘They say she is very like _me_,’ she answered, with a rapidly beating
heart.
‘Not a bit of it,’ cried the Countess. ‘She’s the very image of Bertie!
The hair’s a trifle darker, perhaps, but that is the only difference I
can see. I shall tell him so in my next letter. Well, Bennett, you can
take Miss Conroy away now if you like, and I think she is a very fine
little girl for her age, and does you a great deal of credit.’
‘Thank you, my lady,’ replied the servant, as she disengaged the
clinging arms from about her mistress’s neck, and conveyed little
Valeria out of sight again.
After that interview Fenella’s heart grew secure, and she took her
child about with her wherever she went.
Since she had passed the crucible of Lady Marjoram’s scrutiny, she
considered that all risk of discovery was over; and so much does custom
become our second nature, that at times Fenella almost forgot what she
had done, and detected herself waking with a start, to remember that
Valeria was not Sir Gilbert Conroy’s child. That is, she contrived
to lull her uneasy conscience to sleep respecting the deception she
had practised, so long as it seemed to concern no one but herself.
But the day arrived when the person who had been most injured by the
transaction reappeared upon the scene, and from that moment the heart
of Fenella reasserted itself, and refused to be quieted by any specious
arguments that tried to make a wrong thing look as if it were right.
With the return of spring came Sir Gilbert Conroy from Sovooranooko.
He had not resigned his appointment, but he required change of air
and relaxation, and had procured so many months’ leave to England in
consequence. He came back accompanied by his private secretary, and
laden with the spoils of the chase, in excellent humour with the world,
his wife, himself, and everybody belonging to him. But with the first
kiss of welcome he bestowed upon her, all Fenella’s fancied serenity
fled like a dream, and for the first time she saw what she had done in
its true light.
END OF VOL. II.
COLSTON AND SON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
Transcriber’s Notes
p278 “it’s” changed to “cried bitterly for its loss”.
p294 “your” changed to “and then when you’re settled”.
p312 “ike” changed to “fallen like her hopes”.