“She will come back,” he added in a monotone.

Lady Maria stared at him.  She felt that the man was eerie, Walderhurst, of all men on earth!

“Where do you think she has been?” She professed to make the inquiry with an air of reproof.

“How should one know?” rather with the old stiffness.  “It is impossible to tell.”

Lady Maria Bayne was not the person possessing the temperament to incline him to explain that, wheresoever the outer sphere might be to which the dying woman had been drifting, he had been following her, as far as living man could go.

The elderly house steward opened the door and spoke in the hollow whisper.

“The head nurse wished to know if your ladyship would be so good as to see Lord Oswyth before he goes to sleep.”

Walderhurst turned his head towards the man.  Lord Oswyth was the name of his son.  He felt a shock.

“I will come to the nursery,” answered Lady Maria.  “You have not seen him yet?” turning to Walderhurst.

“How could I?”

“Then you had better come now.  If she becomes conscious and has life enough to expect anything, she will expect you to burst forth into praises of him.  You had better at least commit to memory the colour of his eyes and hair.  I believe he has two hairs.  He is a huge, fat, overgrown thing with enormous cheeks.  When I saw his bloated self-indulgent look yesterday, I confess I wanted to slap him.”

Her description was not wholly accurate, but he was a large and robust child, as Walderhurst saw when he beheld him.

From kneeling at the pillow on which the bloodless statue lay, and calling into space to the soul which would not hear, it was a far cry to the warmed and lighted orris-perfumed room in which Life had begun.

There was the bright fire before which the high brass nursery fender shone.  There was soft linen hanging to be warmed, there was a lace-hung cradle swinging in its place, and in a lace-draped basket silver and gold boxes and velvet brushes and sponges such as he knew nothing about.  He had not been in such a place before, and felt awkward, and yet in secret abnormally moved, or it seemed abnormally to him.

Two women were in attendance.  One of them held in her arms what he had come to see.  It was moving slightly in its coverings of white.  Its bearer stood waiting in respectful awe as Lady Maria uncovered its face.

“Look at it,” she said, concealing her relieved elation under a slightly caustic manner.  “How you will relish the situation when Emily tells you that he is like you, I can’t be as sure as I should be of myself under the same circumstances.”

Walderhurst applied his monocle and gazed for some moments at the object before him.  He had not known that men experienced these curiously unexplainable emotions at such times.  He kept a strong hold on himself.

“Would you like to hold him?” inquired Lady Maria.  She was conscious of a benevolent effort to restrain the irony in her voice.