Everybody agreed that Christian Harefield was devoted to his wife, and that it was a happy marriage. But for his little girl he had evidently no very warm regard. As time went on, and no second baby appeared, the father began to feel himself personally injured by the sex of his only child. She ought to have been a son. Here was the great Harefield property in danger of travelling out of the direct line, and belonging to some spurious Harefield, who should only assume that good old name by Royal Letters Patent. And it seemed to Christian--large-minded and cosmopolitan as he considered himself--that it would be a loss to English society if real Harefields should become extinct in the land. This idea that his daughter was a mistake grew upon him, and by slow degrees began to go hand in hand with another idea--of a far more injurious and dangerous nature--and that was the fancy that his wife loved the child better than she loved him. Those tender maternal caresses which the gentle Italian lavished on her little girl galled her husband almost as much as if he had seen them given to a rival. This was the first arising of that sombre passion which was afterwards to turn all his life to poison. He first learnt the meaning of jealousy when he sat by his own fireside watching the lovely face opposite him smiling down upon Beatrix. He had never cared for children in the abstract, never had perceived any special poetry or beauty in young lives and small round rosy faces, and he could see nothing to love or admire in Beatrix, who, at this stage of her existence, was small and sallow, ‘a little yellow thing, all eyes and mouth,’ as he himself described her. It was a constant irritation to him to see such blind unreasoning affection squandered upon so unlovely an object. He spent one winter and a spring at the Water House, and then carried his wife away with him to Baden, and from Baden went to Florence for the winter, leaving Beatrix in charge of a conscientious and elderly governess at Little Yafford. The child was almost heart-broken at the loss of that loving mother, but no one except Miss Scales, the governess, knew anything about it, and Miss Scales wrote Mrs. Harefield cheery letters, telling her that dear little Trix was getting tall and strong, and had just gone into words of two syllables. Mr. and Mrs. Harefield came back to the Water House, and spent the summer and autumn at home, and gave parties and made themselves generally agreeable. Then came winter and a migration to the South, Beatrix staying behind with Miss Scales as before. This winter she went into words of three syllables, and made small excursions into various foreign grammars, taking to Italian naturally, as a duck hatched by a hen takes to the water.