He hugged her close and hard against his heart. He had in her all that he cared for, all that he had ever sought or desired, his compensation for the bitter past, his sufficiency for the uncertain future. His heart was full of bliss. A sound from behind aroused him. The door was suddenly thrown open. He turned, still clasping the child, and met the infuriated eyes of the wife and mother. The scene that followed was one that roused him to a point of excitement he had never known before. It was very brief, but in those moments, in which Rose-Jewel clung about his neck, while her mother tried in vain to get possession of her, while she seemed to appeal to him for protection, and the very appeal seemed to give him the power of response, he felt himself, for the first time since his marriage, a strong, self-reliant man, and a sense of exultation swelled upward with the surgings of his excited blood, until he felt able to do and dare everything for the sake of defending this child. His wife, scarcely recognizing him in this unfamiliar aspect, was for a moment surprised into silence, but the reaction after this made her more angry yet, and the long restrained indignation of years broke loose. She gave it full vent, and he heard his beloved art defamed and derided, and a possession of the musical gift called a misfortune, a nuisance and a curse. It was enough, she said, to have borne with it in him, and to have had calamity brought through him into her life; but to go through it again, with her own child--was more than she could stand! She declared that her confidence had been abused--that Rose-Jewel should never be left one moment alone with him again--that it should be the object of her life, henceforth, to suppress every sign of musical talent the child might manifest--that she was resolved to do this, if she had to whip her, tie her, starve her, lock her up, a dozen times a day. She looked into his eyes defiantly, and warned him that the child should not be spared! As he heard these words come from her lips, he felt a tightening of the little arms around his neck. The fire of his passionate love for his baby was kindled into a keener flame, and he wished it were possible never to loose her from his arms. Her every second’s absence from his sight would be torturing anxiety to his heart. When the mother came nearer, and tried to take the little creature from him, he threw out his disengaged arm and warded her off, with a look in his eyes which she felt to be dangerous, and somehow, to her own surprise, it checked her. Rose-Jewel, terrified by the only half-comprehended threats of the mother, cried piteously on his neck, and even while to the excited woman before him he showed a spirit of daring, of which he knew he had never been capable until that minute, he was soothing and reassuring the child with soft, caressing sounds and touches, and inwardly vowing that, no matter what happened, he would never be separated from her--never give her up.