, unconscious--to
decide whether her baby would be all hers, or would have slipped away
from her heart, and be a thing almost abhorrent.

She huddled nearer the fire, feeling cold and physically sick. And
suddenly the thought came to her: 'If I don't let the servants know I'm
here, they might go out and see what I saw!' Had she shut the
drawing-room window when she returned so blindly? Perhaps already--! In
a fever, she rang the bell, and unlocked the door. The maid came up.

"Please shut the drawing-room, window, Ellen; and tell Betty I'm afraid I
got a little chill travelling. I'm going to bed. Ask her if she can
manage with baby." And she looked straight into the girl's face. It
wore an expression of concern, even of commiseration, but not that
fluttered look which must have been there if she had known.

"Yes, m'm; I'll get you a hot-water bottle, m'm. Would you like a hot
bath and a cup of hot tea at once?"

Gyp nodded. Anything--anything! And when the maid was gone, she thought
mechanically: 'A cup of hot tea! How quaint! What should it be but
hot?'

The maid came back with the tea; she was an affectionate girl, full of
that admiring love servants and dogs always felt for Gyp, imbued, too,
with the instinctive partisanship which stores itself one way or the
other in the hearts of those who live in houses where the atmosphere
lacks unity. To her mind, the mistress was much too good for him--a
foreigner--and such 'abits! Manners--he hadn't any! And no good would
come of it. Not if you took her opinion!

"And I've turned the water in, m'm. Will you have a little mustard in
it?"

Again Gyp nodded. And the girl, going downstairs for the mustard, told
cook there was "that about the mistress that makes you quite pathetic."
The cook, who was fingering her concertina, for which she had a passion,
answered:

"She 'ides up her feelin's, same as they all does. Thank 'eaven she
haven't got that drawl, though, that 'er old aunt 'as--always makes me
feel to want to say, 'Buck up, old dear, you ain't 'alf so precious as
all that!'"

And when the maid Ellen had taken the mustard and gone, she drew out her
concertina to its full length and, with cautionary softness, began to
practise "Home, Sweet Home!"

To Gyp, lying in her hot bath, those muffled strains just mounted, not
quite as a tune, rather as some far-away humming of large flies. The
heat of the water, the pungent smell of the mustard, and t