“The baby is holding his thumb,” laughed Philip.  “He says that you must come and wake him.  I doubt if you can get him out of the baby’s room to-night.”

The voice of Adare himself answered from the door:  “Was holding it,” he corrected.  “He’s squirming like an eel now and making grimaces that frightened me.  Better hurry to him, Josephine!” He went directly to his wife, and his voice was filled with an infinite tenderness as he slipped an arm about her and caressed her smooth hair with one of his big hands.  “You’re tired, aren’t you?” he asked gently.  “The jaunt was almost too much for my little girl, wasn’t it?  It will do you good to see the baby before you go to bed.  Won’t you come, Miriam?”

Josephine alone saw the look in Philip’s face.  And for one moment Philip forgot himself as he stared at John Adare and his wife.  Beside this flowerlike slip of a woman Adare was more than ever a giant, and his eyes glowed with the tenderness that was in his voice.  Miriam’s lips trembled in a smile as she gazed up at her husband.  In her eyes shone a responsive gentleness; and then Philip turned to find Josephine looking at him from the door, her lips drawn in a straight, tense line, her face as white as the bit of lace at her throat.  He hurried to her.  Behind him rumbled the deep, joyous voice of the master of Adare House, and passing through the door he glanced behind and saw them following, Adare’s arm about his wife’s waist.  Josephine caught Philip’s arm, and whispered in a low voice: 

“They are always like that, always lovers.  They are like two wonderful children, and sometimes I think it is too beautiful to be true.  And now that you have met them I am going to ask you to go to your room.  You have been my true knight—­more than I dared to hope, and to-morrow—­”

She interrupted herself as Adare and his wife appeared at the door.

“To-morrow?” he persisted.

“I will try and thank you,” she replied.  Then she said, and Philip saw she spoke directly to her father:  “You will excuse Philip, won’t you, Mon Pere?  I will go with you, for I have taken the care of baby from Moanne to-night.  Her husband is sick.”

Adare shook hands with Philip.

“I’m up mornings before the owls have gone to sleep,” he said.  “Will you breakfast with me?  I’m afraid that if you wait for Miriam and Mignonne you will go hungry.  They will sleep until noon to make up for to-night.”

“Nothing would suit me better,” declared Philip.  “Will you knock at my door if I fail to show up?”

Adare was about to answer, but caught himself suddenly as he looked from Philip to Josephine.

“What! this soon, Mignonne?” he demanded, chuckling in his beard.  “Your rooms at the two ends of the house already!  That was never the way with Miriam and me.  Can you remember such a thing, Ma Cheri?”

“It—­it is the baby,” gasped Josephine, backing from the light to hide the wild rush of blood to her face.  “Philip cannot sleep,” she finished desperately.