But Cleek made no reply.  Wet and spent after his fierce struggle with the whirling fury he had just escaped, he lay looking up into Ailsa’s eyes as she came to him with the sobbing child close pressed to her bosom and all heaven in her beaming face.

“It is not the ‘funeral wreath’ after all, you see, Miss Lorne,” he said.  “It came near to being it; but—­it is not, it is not.  I wonder, oh, I wonder!”

Then he laughed the foolish, vacuous laugh of a man whose thoughts are too happy for the banality of words.

CHAPTER XXIII

It was midnight and after.  In the close-curtained library of Chepstow House, Cleek, with his little lordship sleeping in his arms, sat in solemn conclave with Lady Chepstow, Captain Hawksley, and Maverick Narkom; and while they talked, Ailsa, like a restless spirit, wandered to and fro, now lifting the curtains to peep out into the darkness, now listening as if her whole life’s hope lay in the coming of some expected sound.  And in her veins there burned a fever of suspense.

“So you failed to get the rascals, did you, Mr. Narkom?” Cleek was saying.  “I feared as much; but I couldn’t get word to you sooner.  We injured the machine in that mad race to the mill, and of course we had to come at a snail’s pace afterwards.  I’m sorry we didn’t get Margot—­sorrier still that that hound Merode got away.  They are bound to make more trouble before the race is run.  Not for her ladyship, however, and not for this dear little chap.  Their troubles are at an end, and the sacred son will be a sacred son no longer.”

“Oh, Mr. Cleek, do tell me what you mean,” implored Lady Chepstow.  “Do tell me how—­”

“Doctor Fordyce, at last!” struck in Ailsa excitedly, as the door-bell and knocker clashed and the butler’s swift footsteps went along the hall.  “Now we shall know, Mr. Cleek—­oh, now we shall know for certain!”

“And so shall all the world,” he replied as the door opened and the doctor was ushered into the room.  “I don’t think you were ever so welcome anywhere or at any time before, doctor,” he added with a smile.  “Come and look at this little chap.  Bonny little specimen of a Britisher, isn’t he?”

“Yes; but my dear sir, I—­I was under the impression that I was called to a scene of excitement; and you seem as peaceful as Eden here.  The constable who came for me said it was something to do with Scotland Yard.”

“So it is, doctor.  I had Mr. Narkom send for you to perform a very trifling but most important operation upon his little lordship here.”

“Upon Cedric!” exclaimed Lady Chepstow, rising in a panic of alarm.  “An operation to be performed upon my baby boy?  Oh, Mr. Cleek, in the name of Heaven—­”