And Catherine had answered her in a voice of quiet, concentrated
animosity:

"If you had died then--_died childless_--I should have thanked God day
and night."

Diane, isolated and unhappy, turned to her baby for consolation. It was
all that was left to her out of the wreck of her life, and the very fact
that both Hugh and Catherine seemed to regard the little daughter with
abhorrence only served to strengthen the passionate worship which she
herself lavished upon her.

The child--they had called her Magda--was an odd little creature, as
might have been expected from the violently opposing characteristics of
her parents.

She was slenderly made--built on the same lithe lines as her mother--and
almost as soon as she was able to walk she manifested an amazing balance
and suppleness of limb. By the time she was four years old she was
trying to imitate, with uncertain little feet and dimpled, aimlessly
waving arms, the movements of her mother, when to amuse the child, she
would sometimes dance for her.

However big a tragedy had occurred in Magda's small world--whether it
were a crack across the insipid china face of a favourite doll or the
death of an adored Persian kitten--there was still balm in Gilead if
_"petite maman"_ would but dance for her. The tears shining in big drops
on her cheeks, her small chest still heaving with the sobs that were
a passionate protest against unkind fate, Magda would sit on the floor
entranced, watching with adoring eyes every swift, graceful motion of