then, as she bent over the cradle, that vision, which now, in the old
house at Brompton, haunted her dreams and beckoned her over seas of blood
into the fancied future, was foreshadowed in the face of her infant son.
To be born again in that birth, to live only in that life, to aspire as
man may aspire, in that future man whom she would train to knowledge and
lead to power,--these were the feelings with which that sombre mother
gazed upon her babe. The idea that the low-born, grovelling father had
the sole right over that son's destiny, had the authority to cabin his
mind in the walls of form, bind him down to the sordid apprenticeship,
debased, not dignified, by the solemn mien, roused her indignant wrath;
she sickened when Braddell touched her child. All her pride of
intellect, that had never slept, all her pride of birth, long dormant,
woke up to protect the heir of her ambition, the descendant of her race,
from the defilement of the father's nurture. Not long after her
confinement, she formed a plan for escape; she disappeared from the house
with her child. Taking refuge in a cottage, living on the sale of the
few jewels she possessed, she was for some weeks almost happy. But
Braddell, less grieved by the loss than shocked by the scandal, was
indefatigable in his researches,--he discovered her retreat. The scene
between them was terrible. There was no resisting the power which all
civilized laws give to the rights of husband and father. Before this
man, whom she scorned so unutterably, Lucretia was impotent. Then all
the boiling passions long suppressed beneath that command of temper.
which she owed both to habitual simulation and intense disdain, rushed
forth. Then she appalled the impostor with her indignant denunciations
of his hypocrisy, his meanness, and his guile. Then, throwing off the
mask she had worn, she hurled her anathema on his sect, on his faith,
with the same breath that smote his conscience and left it wordless. She
shocked all the notions he sincerely entertained, and he stood awed by
accusations from a blasphemer whom he dared not rebuke. His rage broke