"You may depend," said Patty, who did not grudge her sister her new happiness, but envied it from the bottom of her honest woman's heart, "You may depend he has taken every care of that. He is not a man to leave things to chance—at any rate, not where she is concerned."
"Rubbish!" retorted the disappointed matron, who, though she had had no children of her own—perhaps because she had had none—had looked forward to a vicarious participation in Elizabeth's experiences at this time with the strongest interest and eagerness; "as if a man has any business to take upon himself to meddle at all in such matters! It is not fair to Elizabeth. She has a right to have us with her. I gave way about the wedding, but here I must draw the line. She is in her own house, and I shall go to her at once. Tell your maid to pack up, dears—we will start to-morrow."
But they did not. They stayed in London, with what patience they could, subsisting on daily letters and telegrams, until the season there was over, and the baby at Yelverton was three weeks old. Then, though no explanations were made, they became aware that they would be no longer considered de trop by the baby's father, and rushed from the town to the country house with all possible haste.
"You are a tyrant," said Mrs. Duff-Scott, when the master came forth to meet her. "I always said so, and now I know it."
"I was afraid she would get talking and exerting herself too much if she had you all about her," he replied, with his imperturbable smile.
"And you didn't think that we might possibly have a grain of sense, as well as you?"
"I didn't think of anything," he said coolly, "except to make sure of her safety as far as possible."
"O yes, I know"—laughing and brushing past him—"all you think of is to get your own way. Well, let us see the poor dear girl now we are here. I know how she must have been pining to show her baby to her sisters all this while, when you wouldn't let her."
The next time he found himself alone with his wife, Mr. Yelverton asked her, with some conscientious misgiving, whether she had been pining for this forbidden pleasure, and whether he really was a tyrant. Of course, Elizabeth scouted any suggestion of such an idea as most horrible and preposterous, but the fact was—
Never mind. We all have our little failings, and the intelligent reader will not expect to find the perfect man any more than the perfect woman in this present world. And if he—or, I should say, she—could find him, no doubt she would be dreadfully disappointed, and not like him half so well as the imperfect ones. Elizabeth, who, as Patty had predicted, was "butter" in his hands, would not have had her husband less fond of his own way on any account.