mony. For who was a young
girl, but just out of the schoolroom, a girl in pretty, fresh
frocks--the last word of contemporary fashion,--whose baby face and
slow, wide-eyed gaze bore witness to her entire innocence of the great
primitive necessities, the rather brutal joys, the intimate vices, the
far-ranging intellectual questionings which rule and mould the action
of mankind,--who was she, indeed, to cope with a nature such as
Richard's?

"Mother, tell me, who is it?"

And instinctively Katherine fell to pleading. She sat down beside the
bed again and smoothed the sheet.

"You will be tender and loving to her, Dickie?" she said. "For she is
young and very gentle, and might easily be made afraid. You will not
forget what is due to your wife, to your bride, in your longing for a
child?"

"Who is it?" Richard demanded again.

"Ludovic's sister--little Lady Constance Quayle."

He drew in his breath sharply.

"Would she--would her people consent?" he said.

"I think so. Judging by appearances, I am almost sure they would
consent."

A long silence followed. Richard lay still, looking at the rosy flush
that broadened in the morning sky and touched the bosoms of those
delicate clouds with living, pulsating colour. And he flushed too, all
his being softened into a great tenderness, a great shyness, a quick
yet noble shame. For his whole attitude towards this question of
marriage changed strangely as it passed from the abstract, from regions
of vague purpose and desire, to the concrete, to the thought of a
maiden with name and local habitation, a maiden actual and accessible,
whose image he could recall, whose pretty looks and guileless speech he
knew.

"I almost wish she was not Ludovic's sister, though," he remarked
presently. "It is a great deal to ask."

"You have a great deal to offer," Katherine said, adding: "You can care
for her, Dickie?"

He turned his head, his lips working a little, his flushed face very
young and bright.

"Oh yes! I can care fast enough," he said. "And I think--I think I
could make her happy. And you see, already she worships you. We would
pet her, mother, and give her all manner of pretty things, and make a
little queen of her--and she would be pleased--she's a child, such a
child."

Richard remained awake far into the morning, till the rose had died out
of the sky, and the ascending smoke of many kitchen-chimneys began to
stain the expanse of heavenly blue. The thought of his p