almost with
solemnity and kissed Bice's cheek. She seemed to communicate her own
agitation to the girl who stood straight up with her head a little back,
half eager, half defiant. When Bice felt the touch of Lucy's lips,
however, she melted in a moment. Her slight figure swayed, she took
Lucy's disengaged hand with her own, and, stooping over it, kissed it
with lips that quivered. There was not a word said between them; but a
secret compact was thus made under little Tom's inspiration. The little
oracle clambered up upon his mother afterwards, and laid down his head
upon her shoulder and dropped off to sleep with that entire confiding
and abandonment of the whole little being which is one of the deepest
charms of childhood. Who is there with any semblance of a heart in his,
much more her, bosom, who is not touched in the tenderest part when a
child goes to sleep in his arms? The appeal conveyed in the act is one
which scarcely a savage could withstand. The three women gathered round
to see this common spectacle, so universal, so touching. Bice, who was
almost too young for the maternal sentiment, and who was a stern young
Stoic by nature, never shedding a tear, could not tell how it was that
her eyes moistened. But Lucy's filled with an emotion which was sharp
and sore with alarm. "Oh, nurse, don't call my boy a little angel!" she
said, with a sentiment which a woman will understand.

This baby scene upstairs was balanced by one of a very different
character below. Sir Tom had gone into his own room a little disturbed
and out of sorts. Circumstances had been hard upon him, he felt. The
Contessa's letter offering her visit had been a jest to him. He was one
of those who thought the best of the Contessa. He had seen a good deal
of her one time and another in his life, and she held the clue to one or
two matters which it would not have pleased him, at this mature period
of his existence, to have published abroad. She was an adventuress, he
knew, and her friends were not among the best of humanity. She had led a
life which, without being positively evil, had shut her out from the
sympathies of many good people. When a woman has to solve the problem
how to obtain all the luxuries and amusements of life without money, it
is to be expected that her attempts to do so should lead her into risky
places, where the footing was far from sure. But she had never, as Lady
Randolph acknowledged, gone so far as that society should refuse