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She sank gratefully into a chair, her back, which always ached these days, feeling as though it would break in two at the waist line. Oh, how fortunate Scarlett was to have Captain Butler just outside her door while the baby was being born! If only she had had Ashley with her that dreadful day Beau came she would not have suffered half so much. If only that small girl behind those closed doors were hers and not Scarlett’s! ‘Oh, how wicked I am,’ she thought guiltily. ‘I am coveting her baby and Scarlett has been so good to me. Forgive me, Lord. I wouldn’t really want Scarlett’s baby but—but I would so like a baby of my own!’
She pushed a small cushion behind her aching back and thought hungrily of a daughter of her own. But Dr. Meade had never changed his opinion on that subject. And though she was quite willing to risk her life for another child, Ashley would not hear of it. A daughter. How Ashley would love a daughter!
A daughter! Mercy! She sat up in alarm. ‘I never told Captain Butler it was a girl! And of course he was expecting a boy. Oh, how dreadful!’
Melanie knew that to a woman a child of either sex was equally welcome, but to a man, and especially such a self willed man as Captain Butler, a girl would be a blow, a reflection upon his manhood. Oh, how thankful she was that God had permitted her only child to be a boy! She knew that, had she been the wife of the fearsome Captain Butler, she would have thankfully died in childbirth rather than present him with a daughter as his first born.
But Mammy, waddling grinning from the room, set her mind at ease—and at the same time made her wonder just what kind of a man Captain Butler really was.