nly out of the extremity of his jealous love for her that he had
sent the baby away. Thoughtless and selfish he might have been, but
surely no one could say he had been guilty of cruelty to this wife, whom
he loved so madly that even her love for her child had raised the demon
of jealousy within his breast. The word "cruel" stung him to the quick;
it was a new phase of his conduct, one that had never struck him before,
and as he glanced at the poor little baroness, who had half risen on the
sofa, and was looking at him with an agonised look on her pretty face,
he was seized with remorse, and felt it impossible to go on with the
_role_ he had attempted to play of the wise father and husband, who had
only acted for the good of his wife and child. Already he was beginning
to repent of his rash act, and if it had been possible to go after the
yacht the chances are the baron would have started at once, and brought
back the baby for the pleasure of seeing its mother smile again. As it
was impossible, the next best thing was to make the best of it, and if
Mathilde could not be comforted in any other way, why he must promise to
let her have it back again. He decided all this as he petted the
baroness, and tried to comfort her by whispering fond nothings into her
ear; but he soon found all his caresses were useless, unless he yielded
to her entreaties and told her where the baby was, and as all he knew
about it was that it was on board Leon's yacht, on which it was being
taken, he believed, to England, though he was by no means sure, this
did not tend to allay the poor mother's anxious fears.

Her baby confided to the wild Leon's charge, tossed about in a yacht
with not a woman on board to take care of it, her fragile little
daughter, on whom the wind had never been allowed to blow, now at the
mercy of wind and waves for days, and then, supposing the child was
alive, which in her present mood the baroness declared to be impossible,
even if it were, not to know where it was till Leon came back, perhaps
for a week or more, for the baron dare not tell her it would probably be
a month before he returned--oh, it was unbearable! She was sure she
could neither eat nor sleep until she had her baby back. Life until then
would be a burden to her. What could she do without it? Already she was
sure it knew her; and oh, how happy she had been watching by its cradle!
If Arnaud only knew how she delighted in nursing and playing with it,
even to