“Edward William Algernon—­”

“No, no, no,” as if the number alarmed him.  “Pray don’t have a string of names:  one’s quite enough.”

“Oh, very well,” she returned, biting her lips.  “William was your father’s name.  Algernon is my eldest brother’s:  I supposed you might like them.  I thought,” she added, after a pause, “we might ask Lord Kirton to be its godfather.”

“I have decided on the godfathers already.  Thomas Carr will be one, and I intend to be the other.”

“Thomas Carr!  A poor hard-working barrister, that not a soul knows, and of no family or influence whatever, godfather to the future Lord Hartledon!” uttered the offended mother.

“I wish it, Maude.  Carr is the most valued friend I have in the world, or ever can have.  Oblige me in this.”

“Then my brother can be the other.”

“No; I myself; and I wish you would be its godmother.”

“Well, it’s quite reversing the order of things!” she said, tacitly conceding the point.

A silence ensued.  The firelight played on the lace curtains of the baby’s bed, as it did on Lady Hartledon’s face; a thoughtful face just now.  Twilight was drawing on, and the fire lighted the room.

“Percival, do you care for the child?”

The tone had a sound of passion in it, breaking upon the silence.  Lord Hartledon lifted his bent face and glanced at his wife.

“Do I care for the child, Maude?  What a question!  I do care for him:  more than I allow to appear.”

And if her voice had passion in it, his had pain.  He crossed the room, and stood looking down on the sleeping baby, touching at length its cheek with his finger.  He could have knelt, there and then, and wept over the child, and prayed, oh, how earnestly, that God would take it to Himself, not suffer it to live.  Many and many a prayer had ascended from his heart in their earlier married days, that his wife might not bear him children; for he could only entail upon them an inheritance of shame.

“I don’t think you have once taken him in your arms, Percival; you never kiss him.  It’s quite unnatural.”

“I give my kisses in the dark,” he laughed, as he returned to where she was sitting.  And this was in a sense true; for once when he happened to be alone for an instant with the baby, he had clasped it and kissed it in a sort of delirious agony.

“You never had it in the Times, you know!”

“Never what?”

“Never announced its birth in the Times.  Did you forget it?”

“It must have been very stupid of me,” he remarked.  “Never mind, Maude; he won’t grow the less for the omission.  When are you coming downstairs?”

“Mamma is in a rage about it; she says such neglect ought to be punished; and she knows you have done it on purpose.”

“She is always in a rage with me, no matter what I do,” returned Val, good-humouredly.  “She hoped to be here at this time, and sway us all—­you and me and the baby; and I stopped it.  Ho, ho! young sir!”