“A dispatch for you.  Shall I open it?”

“If you like.  I hate dispatches.  They always suggest unpleasant possibilities.  It’s a local, so I guess it’s from my aunt, about that rubbishing dinner of hers.”

Cecil tore open the envelope and read the few words it contained with a lengthening visage; then he let his hand fall, and stared blankly across at his wife.

“It’s from that fellow! and it’s about the child,” he said, uneasily.

“What fellow?  What child?  Not mine!  Give it to me quickly, Cecil.  How slow you are!” And she snatched the telegram from his unresisting hand.  Hastily she scanned the words, her breath coming in gasps, her fingers trembling so that she could scarcely hold the paper.  “The child is dying.  Come at once!” That was all, and the message was signed Nesbit Thorne.  Short, curt, peremptory, as our words are apt to be in moments of intense emotion; a bald fact roughly stated.

For a moment Ethel Cumberland sat stunned, with pallid face and shaking hands, from which the message slipped and fluttered to the carpet.  Then she sprang to her feet in wild excitement, an instinct aroused in her breast which even animals know when their young are in danger.

“Cecil!” she cried, sharply, “don’t you hear?  My child!  My baby is dying!  Why do you stand there staring at me?  I must go—­you must take me to him now, this instant, or it will be too late.  Don’t you understand?  My darling—­my boy is dying!” and she burst into a passion of grief, wringing her hands and wailing.  “Go! send for a carriage.  There’s not a moment to lose.  Oh, my baby!—­my baby!”

“You can’t go out in this storm.  It’s sleeting heavily, and I’ve been ill.  I can’t let you go all that distance with only a maid, and how am I to turn out in such weather?” objected Mr. Cumberland, who, when he was opposed to a thing, was an adept in piling up obstacles.  “I tell you it’s impossible, Ethel.  It’s madness, on such a night as this.”

“Who cares for the storm?” raved Ethel, whose feelings, if evanescent, were intense.  “I will go, Cecil!  I don’t want you, I’ll go by myself.  Nothing shall stop me.  If it stormed fire and blood I should go all the same.  I’ll walk—­I’ll crawl there, before I will stay here and let my boy die without me.  He is my baby—­my own child, I tell you, Cecil!—­if he isn’t yours.”

Of this fact Cecil Cumberland needed no reminder.  It was a thorn that pricked and stung even his dull nature—­for the child’s father lived.  To a jealous temperament it is galling to be reminded of a predecessor in a wife’s affections, even when the grave has closed over him; if the man still lives, it is intolerable.

He was not a brute, and he knew that he must yield to his wife’s pressure—­that he had no choice but to yield; but he stood for a moment irresolute, staring at her with lowering brows, a hearty curse on living father and dying child slowly formulating in his breast.