He had never before so plainly revealed to her his heartlessness, and
the painful consequence of the revelation was, that now, with all her
swelling love for human beings, she felt her heart shrink from him as if
he were of another nature. She could never indeed have loved him as she
did but that, being several years his elder, she had had a good deal to
do with him as baby and child: the infant motherhood of her heart had
gathered about him, and not an eternity of difference could after that
destroy the relation between them. But as he grew up, the boy had
undermined and weakened her affection, though hardly her devotion; and
now the youth had given it a rude shock. So far was she, however, from
yielding to this decay of feeling that it did not merely cause her much
pain but gave rise in her to much useless endeavor; while every day she
grew more anxious and careful to carry herself toward him as a sister
ought.
The Raymounts could not afford one of the best lodgings in Burcliff, and
were well contented with a floor in an old house in an unfashionable
part of the town, looking across the red roofs of the port, and out over
the flocks of Neptune's white sheep on the blue-gray German ocean.
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