Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/27

 to outward seeming. Childless, as well as husbandless, the dormant maternal instinct, which is a part of every true woman, had stirred to life under the care lavished upon her by Wing, whose years were sufficiently less than her own to give a natural tone to the pseudo relation of mother and son. Nevertheless, there had been something of the maternal in her relationship to the judge—of that phase of the maternal which gives to natural weakness courage for defence. It was not in personal finance alone that the judge was a grown-up boy. The sense of fear was so little developed as to amount scarce to caution. Scrupulous in duty, he gave no thought to the enemies or enmities he created, while she saw in these not alone threats to his professional career, but as well danger of a personal nature. Even she, standing guard as she did, had not been able to save him from enemies who defeated his noble ambition and would, as she believed, as readily have destroyed him. As the intensity of her grief softened with time, the solicitude with which she had followed her husband's career, was transferred to Wing, but with less of the factor of self than it possessed of old, with