_Vois-tu_, Virginie," the latter would say hopefully. "When I have a
little baby, I shall have done my duty as the wife of a great
English milord. Even Miss Catherine will no longer regard me as of no
importance."

And Virginie would reply with infinite satisfaction:

"Of a certainty, when madame has a little son, Ma'moiselle Catherine
will be returned to her place."

And now at last the great moment had arrived, and upstairs Catherine and
Virginie were in attendance--both ousted from what each considered her
own rightful place of authority by a slim, capable, and apparently quite
unconcerned piece of femininity equipped against rebellion in all the
starched panoply of a nurse's uniform, while downstairs Hugh stared
dumbly out at the frosted lawns, with their background of bare, brown
trees swaying to the wind from the north.

The door behind him opened suddenly. Hugh whirled round. He was a
tall man with a certain rather formal air of stateliness about him,
a suggestion of the _grand seigneur_, and the unwontedly impulsive
movement was significant of the strain under which he was labouring.

Catherine was standing on the threshold of the room with something in
her arms--something almost indistinguishable amid the downy, fleecy
froth of whiteness amid which it lay.

Hugh was conscious of a new and strange sensation deep down inside
himself. He felt rather as though all the blood in his body had rushed
to one place--somewhere in the middle of it--and were pounding there
against his ribs.

He tried to speak, failed, then instinctively stretched out his arms for
the tiny, orris-scented bundle which Catherine carried.

The next thing of which he was conscious was Catherine's voice as she
placed his child in his arms--very quiet, yet rasping across the tender
silence of the room like a file.

"Here, Hugh, is the living seal which God Himself has set upon the sin
of your marriage."

Hugh's eyes, bent upon the pink, crumpled features of the scrap of
humanity nestled amid the bunchy whiteness in his arms, sought his
sister's face. It was a thin, hard face, sharply cut like carved ivory;
the eyes a light, cold blue, ablaze with hostility; the pale obstinate
lips, usually folded so impassively one above the other, working
spasmodically.

For a moment brother and sister stared at each other in silence. Then,
all at once, Catherine's rigidly enforced composure snapped.

"A girl child, Hugh!" she jeered violently. "A