the 'Three
Pigeons.' The young parents stood looking at one another, and
Rosamond faintly said, "If that girl has taken her to the races!"

"I'm more afraid of that fever in Water Lane," said Julius. "I have
a great mind to take the pony carriage and see that the girl does
not take her there."

"Oh! I sent it with Betty Reynolds," cried Rosamond in an agony.

"At that moment the Hall carriage came dashing up, and as Raymond
saw the three standing in the road, he called to the coachman to
stop, for he and his friend were now within, and Cecil leaning back,
looking much tired. Raymond's eager question was what Rosamond had
done with her charge.

"Left her at the Infirmary;--but, oh! you've not seen baby?"

"Seen--seen what! your baby?" asked Raymond, as if he thought
Rosamond's senses astray, while his bachelor friend was ready to
laugh at a young mother's alarms, all the more when Julius answered,
"It is too true; the baby and her nurse have not been seen here
since ten o'clock; and we are seriously afraid the girl may have
been beguiled to those races. There is a report of the child's
cloak having been seen on a tax-cart."

"Then it was so," exclaimed Cecil, starting forward. "I saw a
baby's mantle of that peculiar green, and it struck me that some
farmer's wife had been aping little Julia's."

"Where? When?" cried Rosamond.

"They passed us, trying to find a place. I did not show it to you
for you were talking to those gentlemen."

"Did you see it, Brown?" asked Julius, going towards the coachman.
"Our baby and nurse, I mean."

"I can't tell about Miss Charnock, sir," said the coachman, "but I
did think I remarked two young females with young Gadley in a tax-
cart. I would not be alarmed, sir, nor my lady," he added, with the
freedom of a confidential servant, who, like all the household,
adored Lady Rosamond. "It was a giddy thing in the young woman to
have done; and no place to take the young lady to. But there--there
were more infants there than a man could count, and it stands to
reason they come to no harm."

"The most sensible thing that has been said yet," muttered the
friend; but Rosamond was by no means pacified. "Gadley's cart!
They'll go to that horrid public-house in Water Lane where there's
typhus and diphtheria and everything; and there's this fog--and that
girl will never wrap her up. Oh! why did I ever go?"

"My dear Rose," said Julius, trying to speak with masculine
compo