It brought depth into her bright, quick eyes.

What a secret satisfaction it was that she had once so far committed herself as to have borne a child! What a queer vague feeling she sometimes experienced in the Spring--almost amounting to a desire to bear another! So one may mark the warm eye of a staid mare, following with her gaze the first strayings of her foal.

'I must get used to it,' she seems to say.

'I certainly do miss the little creature, though I used to threaten her with my hoofs, to show I couldn't be bullied by anything of that age.
And there she goes! Ah, well!' Remembering suddenly, however, that she was sitting there to clear off Mr.Balladyce, because it was so necessary to keep up with what he wrote, Cecilia dropped her gaze to the page before her; and instantly, by uncomfortable chance, not the choice pastures of Mr.Balladyce appeared, where women might browse at leisure, but a vision of the little model.

She had not thought of her for quite an hour; she had tired herself out with thinking-not, indeed, of her, but of all that hinged on her, ever since Stephen had spoken of his talk with Hilary.
Things Hilary had said seemed to Cecilia's delicate and rather timid soul so ominous, so unlike himself.