d invited me to compare the two
adjacent baby mouths. They were, of a truth, very much alike.

She was jealous of the baby, desirous of having it always with her to
tend and fondle, impatient of the nurse and Antoinette. It was a thing
so intensely hers that she resented other hands touching it. Oddly
enough, of me she made an exception. Nothing delighted her more than to
put the little creature into my awkward and nervous arms, and watch me
carry it about the room. I think she wanted to give me something, and
this share in the babe was the most precious gift she could devise.

Of Pasquale she continued to say nothing. In her intense joy of
motherhood he seemed to have become the dim creature of a dream. I had
registered the birth without consulting her--in the legal names of the
parents.

"What are you going to call him, Carlotta?" I asked one day.

"_Mon petit chou._ That's what Antoinette says. It's a beautiful name."

"There are many points in calling an infant one's little cabbage," I
admitted, "but soon he'll grow up to be as old as I am, and--" I sighed,
"who would call me their _petit chow_?"

Carlotta laughed.

"That is true. We shall have to find a name." She reflected for a few
moments; then put her arms round my neck and continued her reflections.

"He shall be Marcus--another Marcus Ordeyne. Then perhaps some day he
will be 'Seer Marcous' like you."

"Do you mean when I die?" I asked.

"Oh, not for years and years and years!" she cried, tightening her clasp
in alarm. "But the child lives longer than the father. It is fate. He
will live longer than I."

"Let us hope so, dear," I answered. "But it is just because I am not his
father that he can't be Sir Marcus when I die. He can have my name; but
my title--"

"Who will have it?"

"No one."

"It will die too?"

"It will be quite dead."

"You are his father, you know, _really_," she whispered.

"The law of England takes no count, unfortunately, of things of the
spirit," said I.

"What are things of the spirit?"

"The things, my dear," said I, "that you are beginning to understand." I
bent down and kissed the child as it lay on her lap. "Poor little Marcus
Ordeyne," I said. "My poor quaintly fathered little son, I'm afraid
there is much trouble ahead of you, but I'll do my best to help you
through it."

"Bless you, dear," said Carlotta, softly.

I looked at her in wonder. She had spoken for the first time like a
grown woman--like a w