come of him, whether he were as sad as herself,
or had been comforted elsewhere.

Vivian's manners in public were perfect to every one, and Clarice shared
with the rest. In private she was terribly snubbed whenever he was in a
bad temper, and carelessly ignored when he was in a good one. The baby
daughter, who was such a comfort to Clarice, was a source of bitter
vexation to Vivian. In his eyes, while a son would have been an
undoubted blessing, a daughter was something actively worse than a
disappointment. When Clarice timidly inquired what name he wished the
child to bear, Vivian distinctly intimated that the child and all her
belongings were totally beneath his notice. She could call the nuisance
what she liked.

Clarice silently folded her insulted darling to her breast, and tacitly
promised it that its mother at least should never think it a nuisance.

"What shall I call her?" she said to Mistress Underdone and Olympias,
both of whom were inclined to pet the baby exceedingly.

"Oh, something pretty!" said Olympias. "Don't have a plain, common
name. Don't call her Joan, or Parnel, or Beatrice, or Margery, or Maud,
or Isabel. You meet those at every turn. I am quite glad I was not
called anything of that sort."

"I wouldn't have it too long," was Mistress Underdone's recommendation.
"I'd never call her Frethesancia, or Florianora, or Aniflesia, or
Sauncelina. Let her have a good, honest name, Dame, one syllable, or at
most two. You'll have to clip it otherwise."

"I thought of Rose," said Clarice, meditatively.

"Well, it is not common," allowed Olympias. "Still, it is very short.
Couldn't you have had it a _little_ longer?"

"That'll do," pronounced Mistress Underdone. "It is short, and it means
a pretty, sweet, pleasant thing. I don't know but I should have called
my girl Rose, if I'd chosen her name; but her father fancied Heliet, and
so it had to be so."

"Well, we can call her Rosamond," comfortingly suggested Olympias.

So, in the course of that evening, Father Bevis baptised little Rose
Barkeworth in the chapel of the palace, the Earl standing sponsor for
her, with the Lady de Chaucombe and the Lady de Echingham. The Countess
had been asked, but to Clarice's private satisfaction had declined, for
she would much rather have had the Earl, and the canon law forbade
husband and wife being sponsors to the same infant.

Something was the matter with the Countess. Every one agreed upon thi