With grave, peculiar tenderness, Celia, before leaving, took up the baby and searched his little face, looked deep into his eyes, which told her of his mysterious little soul no more than before. She knew it was like trying to force open a shut flower. "Whatever happens now, dear," she said to him, though without audible words, "we two go together. All that happens to you, happens to me. If you are in the future to be bad or afflicted, I am to be unhappy. But I will never repent, remembering the glory of you now." She wondered, seriously, at so beautiful a thing being permitted to live. She kissed him many more times than she usually did, upon his eyes, his cheeks, his forehead,--he was royally passive under kissing--and having left him, almost as if something had warned her, she went back and pressed him to her a last time. As she started the horse, she held up a finger to Julia at the gate, in reminder of their agreement; Julia smiled back her good trustworthy smile. Celia had expected to meet with objections at home; they were more obstinate than she had looked for. But Celia was sure of her way where only her relatives' prejudices were opposed as a barrier. She had the whip-hand of an exceptional devotion from them, fairly earned, no doubt. In this case she was able to allay some anxieties, some difficulties she over-rode; all were surprised at the willingness she displayed to make a genuine sacrifice of interests. There was conducted a quiet, polite domestic campaign, at the closing of which she was granted unconditionally, with whatever grim forewarnings, an open field in which to make her life's mistake. A little out of conceit with the whole matter, from the weariness of this contending--impressed, too, in spite of herself, with the pertinence of some of the objections which had been made, but staunch in her main purpose, she at last set forth to fetch Larry. As she passed the Brays' house, a sickly surge of resentment rose from her momentary general disaccord with the world, and beat against the windows that were Judith's, for it had been she who indirectly precipitated this adoption: without her and the indefinable pollution of her caresses, all being allowed to come to its ripeness naturally, there would not have been this effect of strain and muffled discord in bringing home the son-elect. Judith's windows were shuttered; her gay, long-fringed hammocks taken in. Celia had heard that she was gone unexpectedly early this year.