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light! He looked down at her and knew he had been right to be afraid, because the first touch of her pierced him with a terrible love from which he knew he would never be able to escape. His lips trembled but he could not speak; he could only stare at her, and allow the pain to absorb him. She lay in his arms in her utter helpless ness, an innocence beyond trust. One tiny hand rested against her cheek, half-curled like a new leaf, so that he could see the miracle of her nacreous fingernails; her sleeping face quivered, her lips and eyebrows moved, as though with the force of new life flowing through her, strong and invisible, like light flowing through crystal.
    That part of James which was an artist was in love with perfection, and had always sought it in vain; and now here it was, in this new, unused, and perfect child. He wanted to cry out with love and pity, for now she was born, and now , everything that would happen to her was inevitable, life and love and pain and death. The world would harden around her still-damp tenderness like a shell; and time would drive her second by second further from this moment of absolute innocence, down into the darkness of self-knowledge where he lived.
    Amongst the voices around him he heard that of Farleigh saying, 'Madam expressed the wish that, as tomorrow is St Francis's day, the child should be named Frances.’
    Other voices followed, commenting and discussing, but he shut them out, retreating from them into the silence which contained only him and his daughter. Frances! Yes, already the name seemed right, as if it had come with her. Through the pain of his new love, he smiled at her, and her eyes moved under her closed eyelids as if she saw him, and her lips moved as if in response. Her vulnerability made him vulnerable: now would begin the struggle to protect her from the things against which there was no protection; but her love would make him strong. She was his fate; she would be his salvation.
    He brought his face near so that she alone would hear him. 'I love you, Fanny,' he whispered.

    *
    Mr Hobsbawn came of a generation which regarded 'journeys as momentous events which required careful preparation, if they were to be survived; and so though the express bearing the news of his grandchild's birth reached him on the following day, it was another week before he appeared at Morland Place.
    He travelled in his ancient and ponderous berlin, with his own horses, four massive, hairy-hoofed beasts whose merits lay not in speed or beauty, but in endurance. Inside there was ample room for himself, his manservant, and his lawyer, Mr Yardley, and all the apparatus of travel, the furs and rugs, hot-water bottles, cushions, and a hamper of food and drink, against emergencies. Hobsbawn had a special travelling-cap of fur, with long lappets to protect the ears, and travelling-slippers, which had to be changed for boots at every stop, before he could descend.
    He travelled slowly, going only as far as Leeds the first day, with two other stops, besides a long bait at Hudders field at midday. His own coachman and groom sat up on the box, protected against the elements by box-coats so heavy and stiff that the servants could have slipped out of them and left them sitting up there; and against possible highway men by a loaded shotgun of primitive design. They reached Morland Place by dinner-time on the second day, having taken something over six hours to cover the twenty-five miles from Leeds.
    All this he explained at great length to the family as they sat down to dinner together, supposing in his innocence that his audience was enthralled by his tale of hills scaled and ditches narrowly avoided, of cold and damp endured, and cozening inn-keepers bested. Everyone was of course far too polite to do other than listen in silence, but as they left the dining-room for the drawing-room. James took the opportunity to mutter to Mary as they passed through the door together, 'What a piece of work to