CHAPTER XII

    ‘I were but little happy, if I could say how much.’

    SHAKESPEARE.

Twenty-four hours have come and gone and have left everyone a day older, they are all in the garden, except Paul; a little golden haired girl is playing with Teddy, and Mabel watches them from a distance with a beaming smile.  For a great happiness has come to her, the empty place in her heart has been refilled, for a strange and wonderful thing has happened; for only the evening before, her brother knocked at her bedroom door, as she was dressing for dinner, and on her saying, come in, he opened it, and said, ’Mabel, here is somebody I should like you to see.’

Somebody! yes indeed; and a small somebody too, somebody so like Philippa, somebody! who had a little gold locket with a turquoise in the centre.  Ah! it seems too good to be true!

‘Lilian!’ Mabel calls, and then as the child does not take any notice, ‘Baby—­’ The child turns and looks shyly at her mother; and emboldened by a sweet smile she runs and hides her head in her mother’s gown, while the little hands are covered with kisses.

‘You won’t be afraid of me, will you?’ asks Mabel, ’and you will love me very soon, I hope.’

‘Ses,’ is the answer, ‘but I must love Mummy still.’

‘Yes, dear, of course,’ is the answer, ’Mummy, as you call her, is coming to see me this afternoon.’

Teddy has been watching from the distance, his nose has been altogether put out of joint, and it is rather a melancholy freckled face that Philippa catches sight of.

‘Why, Teddy,’ she says, ’come here and tell me what you were doing all the morning, and oh, Jimmy,’ she says, turning to her husband, ’do be an angel and take baby back to the nursery, Mabel is so engrossed with Lilian.’

‘Come along then, old woman,’ and Jimmy lifts up his niece, ’but I say, Lippa, don’t you think it would be just as well to be out of the way when Paul comes.’

‘Perhaps it would,’ answers she, ’and you had better take Teddy with you as well.’

Jimmy has just turned the corner of the house, when he runs straight into Paul and the lady he saw in the train.

There is no time to retreat, so he says, ‘How do you do?’ and the baby puts further conversation out of the question, by beginning to howl, Jimmy in the bottom of his heart feels thankful for it, though aloud he says, ‘I must depart with this tiresome person, come along Teddy.’

The baby deposited in the nursery, he keeps out of the way till tea-time, when he finds them all seated round a table still in the garden.

Clotilde had at first refused to see anyone, but Paul persuaded her at length, ‘Sooner or later, you must,’ he had said, ’you know Mabel, and Lippa is a dear little girl.’

‘But—­’ and Clotilde had looked up at her husband with those large dark eyes of hers ‘they will—­’