the great incentives to do right, Gabrielle. He turns his thoughts inwards, broods, thinks only of himself, and grows the harder for the galling grief and disappointment. It has been so with the Duke. If I had but died years ago, when first my calamity struck me down, he would have taken another wife who would have borne him children. Would God indeed that I had died!"
Gabrielle said nothing. Deep down in her mind the thought began to take shape that there was some purpose behind her friend's words—some new cause to bring this side of her sufferings to the light just now.
"I used to pray so earnestly for a son," the Duchess continued, after a painful pause; "but none came; and I was thus so unneeded, so less than useless; a clog, a drag, a dead weight in his life. I could not wonder he grew cold, and that in time the coldness hardened into cruelty. I stood for no more than the disappointment in his life." She spoke in a slow, leaden, hopeless, melancholy tone, infinitely touching to Gabrielle. "It is a dreary fate for a wife, child, to stir no other feeling in her husband's heart than that of disappointment and to see it hardening slowly into hate. Had I but dared at that time I would have taken my life. But I was a coward. I dared not find freedom in that way."
"Did the Duke know of these thoughts?" asked Gabrielle, keeping her face averted.
"Whether he could read mine as I could read his, I know not. I saw him only rarely. This has been so for many years indeed. That he should speak often of our childlessness, should even taunt me with it, was perhaps no more than natural—and yet every word was like a sword-thrust in my heart. More than once I made him a proposal."
"Yes?"
"It was my own thought," continued the Duchess, smoothing Gabrielle's hair and petting her. "Quite my
