Yet sweet Nancy might have been expected to feel still more
keenly the denial of a blessing to which she had looked forward with
all the varied expectations and preparations, solemn and prettily
trivial, which fill the mind of a loving woman when she expects to
become a mother. Was there not a drawer filled with the neat work of
her hands, all unworn and untouched, just as she had arranged it there
fourteen years ago- just, but for one little dress, which had been
made the burial-dress? But under this immediate personal trial Nancy
was so firmly unmurmuring, that years ago she had suddenly renounced
the habit of visiting this drawer, lest she should in this way be
cherishing a longing for what was not given.
Perhaps it was this very severity towards any indulgence of what
she held to be sinful regret in herself, that made her shrink from
applying her own standard to her husband. 'It was very different- it
was much worse for a man to be disappointed in that way: a woman could
always be satisfied with devoting herself to her husband, but a man
wanted something that would make him look forward more- and sitting by
the fire was so much duller to him than to a woman.' And always,
when Nancy reached this point in her meditations- trying, with
predetermined sympathy, to see everything as Godfrey saw it- there
came a renewal of self-questioning. Had she done everything in her
power to lighten Godfrey's privation? Had she really been right in the
resistance which had caused her so much pain six years ago, and
again four years ago- the resistance to her husband's wish that they
should adopt a child? Adoption was more remote from the ideas and
habits of that time than of our own; still Nancy had her opinion on
it.
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