Excerpt from The Web of TimeThe footfall came nearer, firm and steady, too - at which the anxious face lighted up, but a moment later it was gone, and silence reigned again. The baby seemed, in some mysterious way, to share the disappointment, in any case, it became suddenly quiet, the big blue eyes gazing up at the mother's. The unfathomed depths, as such depths are prone to do, seemed to start some hidden springs of thought in the woman's mind, for the anxious eyes that peered into them were now suffused with tears, then bright again with maternal fondness as she clasped the infant to her breast.For she dreaded the home-coming of her husband, even While she longed for it. The greatest of all books assures us that fear is cast out by love - but love may still fear something in the very one it loves above all others, some alien habit, some sin that changes the whole complexion of a soul. And thus was it with the wife who now awaited her husband's coming with a troubled heart.It had not been ever thus. Far different had it been in the happy days with which her thoughts were busy now as she moved hither and thither, do ing what deft and loving hands could do to make all bright and cheery before her husband should arrive. Those vanished days had been happy ones indeed, with nothing to cloud their joy.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.