“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 composure, “this is nonsense.  Depend upon it, Emma is only anxious to get her home.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!  If she could take her to the races, she would be capable of taking her anywhere!  They all go and drink at that beer-shop, and catch—­Julius, the pony carriage!  Oh! it’s gone!”

“Yes,” said Julius in explanation.  “She sent Betty Reynolds into Wil’sbro’ in it.”

“Get in, Rosamond,” cried Cecil, “we will drive back till we find her.”

But this was more than a good coachman could permit for his horses’ sake, and Brown declared they must be fed and rested before the ball.  Cecil was ready to give up the ball, but still they could not be taken back at once; and Rosamond had by this time turned as if setting her face to walk at once to the race-ground until she found her child, when Raymond said, “Rose! would you be afraid to trust to King Coal and me?  I would put him in at once and drive you till you find Julia.”

“Oh!  Raymond, how good you are!”

The coachman, glad of this solution, only waited to pick up Anne, and hurried on his horses, while the bachelor friend could not help grunting a little, and observing that it was plain there was only one child in the family, and that he would take any bet ‘it’ was at home all right long before Poynsett reached the parsonage.