confessed, her
husband was called into counsel. The trio went through a grave and
disagreeable scene. On the doctor's departure, Alma sat for a long time
stubbornly and dolorously mute; then came tears and passionate
penitence.

'You mustn't think I'm a slave to it,' she said. 'It isn't so at all. I
can break myself off it at once, and I will.'

'Then why did you go on after the doctor's first warning?'

'Out of perversity, nothing else. I suffer much from bad nights, but it
wasn't that; I could bear it. I said to myself that I should do as I
liked.' She gave a tearful laugh.

'That's the whole truth. I felt just like a child when it's determined
to be naughty.'

'But this is far too serious a matter----'

'I know, I know. There shall be an end of it. I had my own way, and I'm
satisfied. Now I shall be reasonable.'

Judging from results, this seemed to be a true explanation. From that
day the doctor saw no reason for doubt. But Harvey had a most
uncomfortable sense of strangeness in his wife's behaviour; it seemed
to him that the longer he lived with Alma, the less able he was to read
her mind or comprehend her motives. It did not reassure him to reflect
that a majority of husbands are probably in the same case.

Meanwhile trouble was once more brewing in the back regions of the
house. The cook made an excuse for 'giving notice'. Rolfe, in his fury,
talked about abandoning the house and going with wife and child to some
village in the heart of France; yet this was hardly practicable. Again
were advertisements sent forth; again came the ordeal of
correspondence--this time undertaken by Harvey himself, for Alma was
unequal to it. The cook whom they at length engaged declared with
fervour that the one thing she panted for was downright hard work; she
couldn't abide easy places, and in fact had left her last because too
little was expected of her.

'She will stay for two months,' said Harvey, 'and then it will be time
for the others to think of moving. Oh, we shall get used to it.'

At the end of March, Alma's second child was born--a girl. Remembering
what she had endured at Hughie's birth, Rolfe feared that her trial
would be even worse this time; but it did not prove so. In a few days
Alma was well on the way to recovery. But the child, a lamentable
little mortal with a voice scarce louder than a kitten's, held its life
on the frailest tenure; there was doubt at first whether it could draw
breath at all, an