Between being pleased--even very much pleased indeed--and a little proud over a thing (notwithstanding the trouble there is about it), and looking on it as one of the greatest things that Heaven itself ever did, there is a wide gulf, if not exactly of opinion, yet of feeling and attitude. From the first moment Sibylla had known of it, the coming of the child was the great thing, the overshadowing thing, in life. Nature was in this, and nature at her highest power; more was not needed. Yet there was more, to make the full cup brim over. Her great talent, her strongest innate impulse, was to give--to give herself and all she had; and this talent and impulse her husband had not satisfied. He was immured in his fastness; he seemed to want only what she counted small tributes and minor sacrifices--they had appeared large once, no doubt, but now looked small because they fell short of the largest that were possible. The great satisfaction, the great outlet, lay in the coming of the child. In pouring out her love on the head of the child she would at the same time pour it out at the feet of him whose the child was. Before such splendid lavishness he must at last stand disarmed, he must throw open all his secret treasure-house. His riches of love--of more than lover's love--must come forth too, and mingle in the same golden stream with hers, all separation being swept away. Here was the true realisation, foreshadowed by the fairy ride in the early days of their love; here was the true riding into the gold and letting the gold swallow them up. In this all disappointments should vanish, all nipped hopes come to bloom again. For it her heart cried impatiently, but chid itself for its impatience. Had not Mrs. Mumple waited years in solitude and silence outside the prison gates? Could not she wait a little too? It need hardly be said that in such a position of affairs as had been reached Mrs. Mumple was much to the fore. Her presence was indispensable, and valued as such, but it had some disadvantages. She shared Sibylla's views and Sibylla's temperament; but naturally she did not possess the charm of youth, of beauty, and of circumstance which served so well to soften or to recommend them. The sort of atmosphere which Mrs. Mumple carried with her was one which should be diffused sparingly and with great caution about a man at once so self-centred and so fastidious as Grantley Imason. Mrs. Mumple was lavishly affectionate; she was also pervasive, and, finally, a trifle inclined to be tearful on entirely inadequate provocation--or, as it appeared to any masculine mind, on none at all, since the tendency assailed her most when everything seemed to be going on remarkably well. Her physical bulk too was a matter which she should have considered; and yet perhaps she could hardly be expected to think of that.