Lulu paced the room, wringing her hands and sobbing like one distracted.

“O Gracie!” she cried, “I’d like to beat myself black and blue!  I just hope papa will come home and do it, because I ought to be made to suffer ever so much for hurting the baby so.”

“O Lu, no!” cried Gracie, aghast at the very idea.  “It wouldn’t do the baby any good.  Oh, I hope papa won’t whip you!”

“But he will!  I know he will; and he ought to,” returned Lulu vehemently.  “Oh, hark!”

She stood still, listening intently, Grace doing the same.  They had seemed to hear a familiar step that they had not heard for many a long month; yes, there it was again:  and with a low cry of joy, Grace bounded to the door, threw it open, but closed it quickly behind her, and sprang into her father’s arms.

“My darling, my precious little daughter!” he said, clasping her close, and showering kisses on her face.  “Where is every one? you are the first I have seen, and—­why, how you have been crying!  What is wrong?”

“O papa! the baby—­the baby’s most killed,” she sobbed.  “Come, I’ll take you to her and mamma!”

Fairly stunned by the sudden dreadful announcement, he silently submitted himself to her guidance, and suffered her to lead him into the nursery, where Violet sat in a low chair with the apparently dying babe on her lap, her mother, grandfather and his wife, and the doctor, grouped about her.

No one noticed his entrance, so intent were they all upon the little sufferer; but just as he gained her side, Violet looked up, and recognized him with a low cry of mingled joy and grief.

“O Levis, my husband!  Thank God that you have come in time—­to see her alive.”

He bent down and kissed the sweet, tremulous lips, his features working with emotion, “My wife, my dear love, what—­what is this? what ails our little one?” he asked in anguished accents, turning his eyes upon the waxen baby face; and, bending still lower, he softly touched his lips to its forehead.

No one replied to his question; and gazing with close scrutiny at the child, “She has been hurt?” he said, half in assertion, half inquiringly.

“Yes, captain,” said Dr. Conly:  “she has had a fall,—­a very severe one for so young and tender a creature.”

“How did it happen?” he asked, in tones of mingled grief and sternness.

No one answered; and after waiting a moment, he repeated the question, addressing it directly to his wife.

“Oh, do not ask me, love!” she said entreatingly, and he reluctantly yielded to her request; but light began to dawn upon him, sending an added pang to his heart; suddenly he remembered Lulu’s former jealousy of the baby, her displeasure at its birth; and with a thrill of horror, he asked himself if this could be her work.

He glanced about the room in search of her and Max.

Neither was there.

He passed noiselessly into the next room, then into the one beyond,—­his wife’s boudoir,—­and there found his son.