“In certain countries,” Hogg told him, “it is believed that goats, which are children of the devil, pass one hour out of every twenty-four in hell. I think you’re like the goats, Shelley.” On the other hand, when engaged with a woman after his own heart in one of the serious and animated talks which he so much enjoyed, he forgot both time and place. The night waned, and Adonis still led his rather breathless priestesses conversationally onwards. Dawn broke; he was talking still. Then, as it was too late to go to bed, a walk in the delicious morning air rounded things off. “What the devil were you talking about all night to your circle of beauties?” the puzzled Hogg would inquire. “I’m sure I don’t know.” Harriet also wondered what her husband could have to say to all these women. She was now near her term, and seldom went out of doors. Shelley often left her alone. In the houses where he was a favourite, she felt that she was unwelcome. At the Godwins’ she could not get on with Mrs. Godwin. At the Boinville’s she had been thought at first charming because she was so pretty and the wife of a poet, but she was soon set down as a very ordinary woman. CHAPTER XVII COMPARISONS The child was a girl, fair, with blue eyes. Her father named her Ianthe. Her mother added Elizabeth. Thus Ovid and Miss Westbrook clasped hands over the cradle. Shelley walked about with the baby in his arms singing to it a monotonous tune of his own making. The idea of bringing up a new being that he might save from prejudices was delightful to him. As an admirer of Rousseau he expected Harriet to suckle the child herself and he was eager to give the tenderest care to both. In the excitement of his new rôle, the odious Eliza was forgotten. But Harriet, egged on by her sister, refused to nurse the child. She engaged a wet nurse, “a hireling” as Shelley declared resentfully. But on this point Harriet was gently but firmly obstinate. A curious change came over her after Ianthe’s birth. It seemed as though she wished to make up for nine months’ inactivity. Her Latin lessons were not resumed. She wanted nothing now but to be out of doors looking into the bonnet-shops and jewellers’ windows. To find pleasure in such idle trifling seemed to Shelley monstrous and unintelligible. He was willing to pay for any of Harriet’s “reasonable” fancies, even at the price of loans and endless annoyances, but to spend the money so necessary to “persecuted writers” and other just causes, on mere “glad rags,” appeared to him scandalous, and he made his wife and sister-in-law feel it. Eliza was careful to show up Shelley’s failings.