He saw how the hope
dawned on the spirit of Maud like the rising of a star, and he
could rejoice in that with whole-hearted joy, in the mere sharing
of a beautiful secret; but it was strange to him to see how to Maud
it seemed like the realisation and fulfilling of all desire, the
entering into a kingdom; it was not only the satisfaction of all
the deepest vital processes, but something glorious, unthinkable,
the crowning of destiny, the summit of life. There was no reasoning
about it; it was the purest and finest instinct. But with Howard it
was not thus. He could not look beyond Maud; and it seemed to him
like the dawning of a new influence, a new fealty, which would
almost come in between him and his wife, a division of her
affections. She seemed to him, in the few tremulous words they
spoke, to have her eyes fixed on something beyond him; it was not
so much a gift that she was bringing him as a claim of further
devotion. He realised with a shock of surprise that in the books he
had read, in the imagined crises of life, the thought of the child,
the heir, the offshoot, was supposed to come as the crown of
father's and mother's hopes alike, and that it was not so with him.
Was he jealous of the new claim? It was something like that. He
found himself resolving and determining that no hint of this should
ever escape him; he even felt deeply ashamed that such a thought
should even have crossed his mind. He ought rather to rejoice
wholly and completely in Maud's happiness; but he desired her
alone, and so passionately that he could not bear to have any part
of the current of her soul diverted from him.
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