If so,
what cause she had to hate and curse him! The episode with him was
simply an irksomeness: it had frozen her instead of warming her,
checked her expansion, and perhaps, breaking the cycle of normal
development, made her imperfect as a woman.
Perhaps this was the real reason why she had remained childless. She
represented completed womanhood in this respect at least, that she
desired to be a mother. The possession of children was the one thing
that made her envious of other women. The idea of having a child of
her own made her almost faint with longing--a baby to nurse, a little
burden to wheel about in a perambulator, a companion to prattle to her
all day while Will was busy down-stairs. If the hope of such joy had
been taken from her by Mr. Barradine, oh, how immeasureably great was
her cause for hatred!
She sat staring at the distant point where he and his horse had just
now vanished, and for a little while her thoughts were like curses.
Any attributes of grandeur were transitory illusions; he was wholly
mean and base: he was the embodied principle of evil that had spoiled
the past and that still threatened the future. She wished that he
might eventually suffer as much as he had made her suffer.
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