“I came in like a monster and didn’t wake ’im,” he was whispering to himself.  “The little beggar!”

He reached out a great hand behind him, gropingly, and it touched a chair.  He drew it to him, still keeping his eyes on the baby, and sat down, his huge, bent shoulders doubled over the edge of the bed, his hands hovering hesitatingly over the counterpane.  In wonderment Philip watched him, and he heard him whisper again: 

“You blessed little beggar!”

Then he looked up suddenly.  In his face was the transformation that might have come into a woman’s.  There was something awesome in its animal strength and its tenderness.  He seized one of Philip’s hands and held it for a moment in a grip that made the other’s fingers ache.

“You’re sure it’s a boy?” he asked anxiously.

“Quite sure,” replied Philip.  “We’ve named him John.”

The master of the Adare House leaned over the bed again.  Philip heard him mumbling softly in his thick beard, and very cautiously he touched the end of a big forefinger to one of the baby’s tiny fists.  The little fingers opened, and then they closed tightly about John Adare’s thumb.  The older man looked again at Philip, and from him his eyes sought Josephine.  His voice trembled with ecstasy.

“Where is Josephine?”

“Gone to her mother,” replied Philip.

“Bring her—­quick!” commanded Adare.  “Tell her to bring her mother and wake the kid or I’ll yell.  I’ve got to hear the little beggar talk.”  As Philip turned toward the door he flung after him in a sibilant whisper:  “Wait!  Maybe you know how to do it—­”

“We’d better have Josephine,” advised Philip quickly, and before Adare could argue his suggestion he hurried into the hall.

Where he would find her he had no idea, and as he went down the hall he listened at each of the several doors he passed.  The door into the big living-room was partly ajar, and he looked in.  The room was empty.  For a few moments he stood silent.  From the size and shape of the building whose outside walls he had followed in his hunt for Jean he knew there must be many other rooms, and probably other shorter corridors leading to some of them.

Just now his greatest desire was to come face to face with Croisset—­and alone.  He had already determined upon a course of action if such a meeting occurred.  Next to that he wanted to see Josephine’s mother.  It had struck him as singular that she had not accompanied her husband to Josephine’s room, and his curiosity was still further aroused by the girl’s apparent indifference to this fact.  Jean Croisset and the mistress of Adare House had hung behind when the older man came into the room where they were standing.  For an instant Jean had revealed himself, and he was sure that Adare’s wife was not far behind him, concealed in the deeper gloom.