"Ay, a girl!" taunted Catherine, her voice cracking with rising
hysteria. "_A girl!_ . . . For eight generations the first-born has been
a son. And the ninth is a girl! The daughter of a foreign dancing-woman!
. . . God has indeed taken your punishment into His own Hands!"



CHAPTER II

THE WIDENING GULF

The birth of a daughter came upon Hugh in the light of an almost
overwhelming shock. He was quite silent when, in response to Catherine's
imperative gesture, he surrendered the child into her arms once more.
As she took it from him he noticed that those thin, angular arms of hers
seemed to close round the little swaddled body in an almost jealously
possessive clasp. But there was none of the tender possessiveness of
love about it. In some oddly repugnant way it reminded him of the motion
of a bird of prey at last gripping triumphantly in its talons a victim
that has hitherto eluded pursuit.

He turned back dully to his contemplation of the wintry garden, nor, in
his absorption, did he hear the whimpering cry--almost of protest--that
issued from the lips of his first-born as Catherine bore the child away.

For a space it seemed as though his mind were a blank, every thought and
feeling wiped out of it by the stupendous, nullifying fact that his wife
had given birth to a daughter. Then, with a rush as torturing as the
return of blood to benumbed limbs, emotions crowded in upon him.