“Has Master Walter come in yet?” she asked of the footman.

“No, ma’am.  I saw him just now playing in front there.”

She went to the window.  Yes, running about the paths of the Square garden was the child, attended by his nurse.  He was a sturdy little fellow.  His mother, wishing to make him hardy, sent him out in all weathers, and the boy throve upon it.  He was three years old now, but looked older; and he was as clever and precocious as some children are at five or six.  Her heart thrilled with a strange joy only at the sight of him:  he was her chief happiness in life, her idol.  Whether he would succeed to Leet Hall she knew not; since the one time he mentioned it, Captain Monk had said no more upon the subject, for or against it.

Why need she have longed for it so fervently? to the setting at naught the expressed wishes of her deceased uncle and to the detriment of Harry Carradyne?  It was just covetousness.  As his father’s eldest son (there were no younger ones yet) the boy would inherit a fine property, a large income; but his doting mother must give him Leet Hall as well.

Her whole heart went out to the child as she watched him playing there.  A few snowflakes were beginning to fall, and dusk would soon be drawing on, but she would not call him in.  Standing thus at the window, it gradually grew upon her to notice that something was standing back against the opposite rails, looking fixedly at the houses.  A young, fair woman apparently, with a profusion of light hair; she was draped in a close dark cloak which served to conceal her figure, just as the thick veil she wore concealed her face.

“I believe it is this house she is gazing at so attentively—­and at me,” thought Mrs. Hamlyn.  “What can she possibly want?”

The woman did not move away and Mrs. Hamlyn did not move; they remained staring at one another.  Presently Walter burst into the room, laughing in glee at having distanced his nurse.  His mother turned, caught him in her arms and kissed him passionately.  Wilful though he was by disposition, and showing it at times, he was a lovable, generous child, and very pretty:  great brown eyes and auburn curls.  His life was all sunshine, like a butterfly’s on a summer’s day; his path as yet one of roses without their thorns.

“Mamma, I’ve got a picture-book; come and look at it,” cried the eager little voice, as he dragged his mother to the hearthrug and opened the picture-book in the light of the blaze.  “Penelope bought it for me.”

She sat down on a footstool, the book on her lap and one arm round him, her treasure.  Penelope waited to take off his hat and pelisse, and was told to come for him in five minutes.

“It’s not my tea-time yet,” cried he defiantly.

“Indeed, then, Master Walter, it is long past it,” said the nurse.  “I couldn’t get him in before, ma’am,” she added to her mistress.  “Every minute I kept expecting you’d be sending one of the servants after us.”