Page:Possession (1926).pdf/493

 had said, Thérèse could have protected herself from a man like Callendar. She had been born old and wise, expecting nothing. She could not argue with Thérèse. The old woman would have thought her crazy.

"I have left him," she said. "I shall not go back."

"Perhaps the baby . . ." And Thérèse put her head on one side in a queer foreign fashion and smirked. "Perhaps the baby will change things." Then she leaned forward and patted Ellen's hand. "Never mind, we won't speak of it now, my darling. . . . It would disturb you . . . in your condition." She kept returning again and again to the idea of the baby.

Then, settling back in her chair, she took a biscuit from the reticule and began to nibble it. "We need not worry now," she continued. "To think of it . . . a baby . . . a grandson."

Ellen could not resist the perverse temptation. It was this old woman who, after all, had forced the marriage. She said, "Perhaps it will be a granddaughter."

But Thérèse was confident. "No, I have said prayers. I have burned candles. I have done everything. . . . I have paid an astrologer . . . I have overlooked nothing. I am sure it will be a grandson. It is all arranged. You have made me happy, my child. I must arrange to reward you."

(So Ellen had made two women fantastically happy . . . her own mother and old Thérèse.)

"I will make a settlement on you. I will give you a present . . . a magnificent present." And she began to finger her reticule again as if she might draw from it a bag of great gold pieces. "I will send to-morrow for a lawyer. We will arrange it."

And then, like Hattie, she began to offer piece after piece of advice, bits of good sense and weird snatches of ancient, tribal superstition. Ellen must do thus and so to make certain the child was a boy. She must eat this and that. And she must have the proper doctors. . . the very best. They must take no