tten or a puppy. But then a little
quiver came over the small countenance, and the attendant said it was
"the wind." Perhaps the opening of the eyes was the wind too, or some
other automatic effect. He would not hold out his finger to be clasped
tight by the little flickering fist, as Elinor would have had him. He
would none of those follies; he turned away from it not to allow himself
to be moved by the effect, quite a meretricious one, of the baby in the
young mother's arms. That was all poetry, sentiment, the trick of the
painter, who had found the combination beautiful. Such ideas belonged,
indeed, to the conventional-sacred, and he had never felt any profane
resistance of mind against the San Sisto picture or any of its kind.
But Phil Compton's brat was a very different thing. What did it matter
what became of it? If it were not for Elinor's perverse feeling on
the subject, and that perfectly imbecile prostration of her mother,
a sensible woman who ought to have known better, before the little
creature, he would himself have been rather grateful to Phil Compton for
taking it away. But when he saw the look of terror upon Elinor's face
when an unexpected step came to the door, when he saw her turn and fly,
wrapping the child in her arms, on her very heart as it seemed, bending
over it, covering it so that it disappeared altogether in her embrace,
John's heart was a little touched. It was only a hawking tramp with pins
and needles, who came by mistake to the hall door, but her panic and
anguish of alarm were a spectacle which he could not get out of his
eyes.

"You see, she never feels safe for a moment. It will be hard to persuade
her that that man, though I've seen him about the roads for years, is
not an emissary--or a spy--to find out if she is here."

"I am sure it is quite an unnecessary panic," said John. "In the first
place, Phil Compton's the last man to burden himself with a child; in
the second, he's not a brute nor a monster."

"You called him a brute last night, John."

"I did not mean in that way. I don't mean to stand by any rash word that
may be forced from me in a moment of irritation. Aunt, get her to give
over that. She'll torture herself to death for nothing. He'll not try to
take the child away--not just now, at all events, not while it is a
mere---- Bring her to her senses on that point. You surely can do that?"

"If I was quite sure of being in my own," Mrs. Dennistoun said, with a
forlorn