“He’s dying, Molly,” he said gently.

She shook her head.  “No; he’s not dying.  God isn’t cruel.  He won’t let him die.”

She turned the child’s face to her breast, hoping perhaps that his hands would move in the old delicious way.

He did not stir, and she laid him on his back again and looked at him.  His lips and the hollows under his eyes were blue.  The collapse had come.  Louis knelt down and put his hand over the tiny heart.

A spasm passed over the baby’s face, simulating a smile.  Then Mrs. Nevill Tyson fell to smiling too.

“See”—­she said.

But Stanistreet had seen enough.  He rose from his knees and left her.

CHAPTER X

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

Well, if she wouldn’t look at him when he was alive, she might show some feeling now he’s dead. (So Justice.)

She showed no feeling.  That is to say, none perceptible to the eyes of Justice.

On Thursday morning she heard from Tyson.  A short note:  “I am more sorry than words can say.  I wish I could be with you, but I’m kept in this infernal place till the beginning of next week.  I hope the little man will pull through.  Take care of yourself,” and the usual formula.

She sat down and wrote a telegram, brutally brief, as telegrams must be.  “Died yesterday.  Funeral Friday, two o’clock.  Can you come?”

Two hours later the answer came in one word—­“Impossible.”  She flushed violently and set her face like a flint.

But she showed no feeling.  None when they screwed the baby into a box lined with white satin; none when they lowered him into his grave and piled flowers and earth upon him; none when, as they drove home from the funeral, Mrs. Wilcox’s pent-up emotions broke loose in a torrent of words.

Having gone through so much, it occurred to Mrs. Wilcox that the time had now come to look a little on the bright side of things.  “Well,” she began with a faint perfunctory sigh, “I am thankful we’ve had a fine day.  The sunshine makes one hope.  You’ll remember, Molly, it was just the same at your poor father’s funeral.  We had a sudden gleam of sunlight between the showers.  There were showers, for my new crape was ruined.  And in December we might have had snow or pouring rain—­so bad for the clergyman—­and gentlemen, if they take their hats off.  Some don’t; and very sensible too.  They catch such awful colds at funerals, standing about in their wet feet, and no one likes to be the first to put up an umbrella.  I didn’t see Captain Stanistreet in the church—­did you?—­nor yet at the grave.  Rather strange of him.  I think under the circumstances he might have come—­Nevill’s oldest friend.  Did you know Miss Batchelor was in church!  She was.  Not in the chancel—­away at the back.  You couldn’t see her.  I think it showed very nice feeling in her to come, and to send those lovely roses too—­from her