and Nigel's
wife were cut out of the succession--that, so far as one could see, Mrs.
Armine would now never be Lady Harwich.

For himself Nigel did not care at all. Harwich was ten years older than
he was, but he had never thought about succeeding him, had never wished
to succeed him, and when he had married Ruby he had known that his
sister-in-law was going to have a child. He had known this, but he had
not told it to Ruby. He had not concealed it; simply, it had not
occurred to him to tell her. Now the tone of Harwich's letter was making
him wonder, "Will she mind?"

Presently he heard her coming into the room behind him, crossing it,
stepping out upon the terrace.

"Nigel! Are you asleep?"

"Asleep!" he said. "At this hour!"

For once there was an unnatural sound in his voice, a note of
carelessness that was forced. He jumped up from his chair, scattering
his letters on the ground.

"You haven't read your letters all this time!"

"Not yet; not all of them, at least," he said, bending to pick them up.
"I've been reading one from my brother, Harwich."

"From Lord Harwich?" She sent a sharp look to him. "Is it bad news? Is
Lord Harwich ill?"

"No, Ruby."

"Then what's the matter?"

"The matter? Nothing! On the contrary, it's a piece of good news."

In spite of himself almost, his eyes were staring at her with an
expression of scrutiny that was fierce, because of the anxiety within
him.

"Poor old Harwich has had to wait so long, and now at last he's got what
he's wanted."

"What's that?"

"A child--that is, children--twins."

There was a moment of silence. Then Mrs. Armine said, with a smile:

"So that's it!"

"Yes, that's it, Ruby."

"Girls? Boys? Girl and boy?"

"Boys, both of them."

"When you write, congratulate him for me. And now read the rest of your
letters. I'm going to take a stroll in the garden."

As she spoke, she put up her parasol and sauntered away towards the
Nile, stopping now and then to look at a flower or tree, to take a rose
in her hand, smell it, then let it go with a careless gesture.

"Does she really mind? Damn it, does she mind?"

There had been no cloud on her face, no involuntary movement of dismay,
yet in her apparently unruffled calm there had been a reticence that
somehow had chilled him. She was so clever in reading people that surely
she must have felt the anxiety in his heart, the eager desire to be
reassured. If she had only responded to it frankly,