ast.

"Margaret, what do you mean?" he ejaculated. "Vincenza's child is dead.
This is our little Brian. You are dreaming."

He did not know whether she understood him or not, but a wild light
suddenly flashed into her great, dark eyes. She dashed the child down
upon the bed with the fury of a mad woman.

"You are deceiving me," she cried; "I know that my child is dead. Tell
me the truth; my child is dead!"

"No such, thing, Margaret," cried Mr. Luttrell, almost angrily; "how can
you utter such folly?"

But his remonstrance passed unheeded. Mrs. Luttrell had, sunk insensible
to the floor; and her swoon was followed by a long and serious relapse,
during which it seemed very unlikely that she would ever awake again to
consciousness.

The crisis approached. She passed it safely and recovered. Then came the
tug of war. The little Brian was brought back to the house, with
Vincenza as his nurse; but Mrs. Luttrell refused to see him. Doctors
declared her dislike of the child to be a form of mania; her husband
certainly believed it to be so. But the one fact remained. She would not
acknowledge the child to be her own, and she would not consent to its
being brought up as Edward Luttrell's son. Nothing would convince her
that her own baby still lived, or that this child was not the offspring
of the Vasari household. Mr. Luttrell expostulated. Vincenza protested
and shed floods of tears, the doctor, the monks, the English nurse were
all employed by turn, in the endeavour to soften her heart; but every
effort was useless. Mrs. Luttrell declared that the baby which Vincenza
had brought her was not her child, and that she should live and die in
this conviction.

Was she mad? Or was some wonderful instinct of mother's love at the
bottom of this obstinate adherence to her opinion?

Mr. Luttrell honestly thought that she was mad. And then, mild man as he
was, he rose up and claimed his right as her husband to do as he thought
fit. He sent for his solicitor, a Mr. Colquhoun, through whom he went so
far even as to threaten his wife with severe measures if she did not
yield. He would not live with her, he said--or Mr. Colquhoun reported
that he said--unless she chose to bury her foolish fancy in oblivion.
There was no doubt in his mind that the child was Brian Luttrell, not
Lippo Vasari, whose name was recorded on a rough wooden cross in the
churchyard of San Stefano. And he insisted upon it that his wife should
receive the child