With an inconsistency not very uncommon, he resented her silence at the same time that he knew the expression of her thoughts would enrage him. He was still sufficiently under the control of her beauty to feel jealous of her love, which he very well knew was with the man they both thought dead. That truth had leaked out long ago. He once heard her teaching her child to pray; and presently lift up her own voice in a prayer which had no name in it but John’s, whom she cried aloud to, bidding his spirit take witness of the sufferings which had driven her into an act that made her hateful to herself. Once, when her gentle sweetness was stirred into passion by him, she declared that she had never loved him; that she had married him for her child’s sake; that if God took her babe from her she would kill herself, for her husband was in heaven, and his voice spoke in her conscience, eternally reproaching her for forgetting the vow they had made--_that though death should sunder them, the survivor would be true to love and memory, and live alone_. But his petulance, his churlishness, his occasional brutality, indeed, was not owing to this. She had merely put his own knowledge of her into language; and since he had married her, fully persuaded that the gift of her hand had been dictated by pure necessity only, he could scarcely find himself alienated by the confession of her motive. Poverty and drink were the two demons that mastered him. And poverty without drink would have done the work; for his happened to be one of those boneless natures which give under a very small weight; one of those weak characters who, if they find themselves in a gutter, are satisfied to lie there and roll there, and moisten the mud with which they bedaub those about them with tears, and make their settlements gross with oaths, and shrieks, and reproaches. CHAPTER XXVII. FATHER AND CHILD. All next morning Holdsworth kept watch for Dolly and his child, but did not see them. But Mr. Conway had passed when Mrs. Parrot happened to be in the room laying the cloth for dinner, and the woman had directed Holdsworth’s attention to him. The glimpse he obtained, however, was very brief. All that he saw was a sandy-whiskered gentleman, with a tilted hat, aim with rather uncertain legs for the gate with the brass plate upon it, and vanish with an alacrity that was painfully suggestive of a disordered vision. “There he goes! Drunk as usual!” exclaimed Mrs. Parrot, disgustfully, giving the table-cloth an angry twitch. “How does he live? I have seen nobody call at his house yet!” “No, sir; and I don’t think you’re likely to. Persons as can’t get served at the other tooth-drawers are too sensible to walk all this way to get their jaws broke.” “Are they _very_ poor, do you think?”