Carr is the most valued friend I have in the world, or
ever can have. Oblige me in this."

"Then my brother can be the other."

"No; I myself; and I wish you would be its godmother."

"Well, it's quite reversing the order of things!" she said, tacitly
conceding the point.

A silence ensued. The firelight played on the lace curtains of the baby's
bed, as it did on Lady Hartledon's face; a thoughtful face just now.
Twilight was drawing on, and the fire lighted the room.

"Percival, do you care for the child?"

The tone had a sound of passion in it, breaking upon the silence. Lord
Hartledon lifted his bent face and glanced at his wife.

"Do I care for the child, Maude? What a question! I do care for him: more
than I allow to appear."

And if her voice had passion in it, his had pain. He crossed the room,
and stood looking down on the sleeping baby, touching at length its cheek
with his finger. He could have knelt, there and then, and wept over the
child, and prayed, oh, how earnestly, that God would take it to Himself,
not suffer it to live. Many and many a prayer had ascended from his heart
in their earlier married days, that his wife might not bear him children;
for he could only entail upon them an inheritance of shame.

"I don't think you have once taken him in your arms, Percival; you never
kiss him. It's quite unnatural."

"I give my kisses in the dark," he laughed, as he returned to where she
was sitting. And this was in a sense true; for once when he happened to
be alone for an instant with the baby, he had clasped it and kissed it in
a sort of delirious agony.

"You never had it in the _Times_, you know!"

"Never what?"

"Never announced its birth in the _Times_. Did you forget it?"

"It must have been very stupid of me," he remarked. "Never mind, Maude;
he won't grow the less for the omission. When are you coming downstairs?"

"Mamma is in a rage about it; she says such neglect ought to be punished;
and she knows you have done it on purpose."

"She is always in a rage with me, no matter what I do," returned Val,
good-humouredly. "She hoped to be here at this time, and sway us all--you
and me and the baby; and I stopped it. Ho, ho! young sir!"

The baby had wakened with a cry, and a watchful attendant came gliding
in at the sound. Lord Hartledon left the room and went straight down to
the Temple to Mr. Carr's chambers. He found him in all the bustle of
departure from town. A cab stood at the f