Fiction > Book editions > London, 1889 - Master of Ballantrae

ISi THE maste:; oi- e.vi.lantr.ve.
lady's. Not that ever I lost the love I bore my master.
But, for one thhig", he had the less use for my soeiety.
For another, I could not but compare the ease ol: jNIr.
Alexander with that of Miss Katharine ; for whom my
lord had never found the least attention. And for a
third, I was Avounded by the change he discovered to
his wife, which struck me in the nature of an infidelity.
I could not but admire, besides, the constancy and kind-
ness she displayed. Perhaps her sentiment to my lord,
as it had been founded from the first in pity, was that
rather of a mother than a wife; perhaps it pleased her
— if I may so say — to behold her two children so happy
in each other ; the more as one had suffered so unjustly
in the past. But, for all that, and though I could never
trace in her one spark of jealousy, she must fall back
for society on poor neglected jNIiss Katharine; and I,
on my part, came to pass my spare hours more and
more with the mother and daughter. It would be
easy to make too much of this division, for it was a
pleasant family, as families go ; still the thing existed ;
Avhether my lord knew it or not, I am in doubt. I do
not think he did; he was bound up so entirely in his
son ; but the rest of us knew it, and in a manner
suffered from the knowledge.
"What troubled us most, howevef, was the great and
growing danger to the child. My lord was his father
over again ; it was to be feared the son vv'ould prove a
second Master. Time has proved these fears to have