married.

Naturally, the news was disquieting to Jane. The hope, however, was left
her, that the stepmother might care as little for the child as did the
father, and that so, for some years at least, he might be left to her. It
was a terrible thought to the loving woman that they might be parted; a
more terrible thought that her baby might become a man like his father.
Of all horrors to a decent woman, a bad man must be the worst! If by her
death she could have left the child her hatred of evil, Jane would have
willingly died: she loved her husband, but her sister's boy was in
danger!




CHAPTER II.


_STEPMOTHER AND NURSE._

The rumour of sir Wilton's marriage was, as rumour seldom is, correct.
Before the year was out, lady Ann Hardy, sister to the earl of Torpavy,
representing an old family with a drop or two of very bad blood in it,
became lady Ann Lestrange How much love there may have been in the
affair, it is unnecessary to inquire, seeing the baronet was what he was,
and the lady understood the _what_ pretty well. She might have preferred
a husband not so much what sir Wilton was, but she was nine-and-twenty,
and her brother was poor. She said to herself, I suppose, that she might
as well as another undertake his reform: some one must! and married him.
She had not much of a trousseau, but was gorgeously attired for the