Sylvia's Lovers

And now Philip seemed as prosperous as his heart could desire. The

business flourished, and money beyond his moderate wants came in. As

for himself he required very little; but he had always looked

forward to placing his idol in a befitting shrine; and means for

this were now furnished to him. The dress, the comforts, the

position he had desired for Sylvia were all hers. She did not need

to do a stroke of household work if she preferred to 'sit in her

parlour and sew up a seam'. Indeed Phoebe resented any interference

in the domestic labour, which she had performed so long, that she

looked upon the kitchen as a private empire of her own. 'Mrs

Hepburn' (as Sylvia was now termed) had a good dark silk gown-piece

in her drawers, as well as the poor dove-coloured, against the day

when she chose to leave off mourning; and stuff for either gray or

scarlet cloaks was hers at her bidding.

What she cared for far more were the comforts with which it was in

her power to surround her mother. In this Philip vied with her; for

besides his old love, and new pity for his aunt Bell, he never

forgot how she had welcomed him to Haytersbank, and favoured his

love to Sylvia, in the yearning days when he little hoped he should

ever win his cousin to be his wife. But even if he had not had these

grateful and affectionate feelings towards the poor woman, he would

have done much for her if only to gain the sweet, rare smiles which

his wife never bestowed upon him so freely as when she saw him

attending to 'mother,' for so both of them now called Bell. For her

creature comforts, her silk gowns, and her humble luxury, Sylvia did

not care; Philip was almost annoyed at the indifference she often

manifested to all his efforts to surround her with such things. It

was even a hardship to her to leave off her country dress, her

uncovered hair, her linsey petticoat, and loose bed-gown, and to don

a stiff and stately gown for her morning dress. Sitting in the dark

parlour at the back of the shop, and doing 'white work,' was much

more wearying to her than running out into the fields to bring up

the cows, or spinning wool, or making up butter. She sometimes

thought to herself that it was a strange kind of life where there

were no out-door animals to look after; the 'ox and the ass' had

hitherto come into all her ideas of humanity; and her care and

gentleness had made the dumb creatures round her father's home into

mute friends with loving eyes, looking at her as if wistful to speak

in words the grateful regard that she could read without the poor

expression of language.