'Is your house haunted?' she asked Miss Egerton at dinner.
'Indeed it is not. Why do you ask?'
'There is no child in the house is there?'
'Yes,' replied Miss Egerton, 'there is Vera's child.'
The visitor could not suppress her astonishment, and Mrs. Egerton, noting it, said with extra severity: 'I like children to be kept in their proper place. He has a good nurse, who looks after him entirely. And I am thankful to say that the nurseries are at the top of the house, so we are not being continually reminded of his presence.'
'He must be a very quiet child.'
There was no response. When Miss Egerton was alone with her friend she gave her a little more information.
'When Vera went abroad with her husband her child was only a few months old, and very delicate, so she was advised to leave him behind. She sent him here at once, without first asking mother's permission to do so, and mother did not like it. We do not care for children; but he is no trouble. Mother visits the nurseries every morning and sees to his comfort and health. When poor Vera died she determined to keep him for good and all. His father never writes to us, or shows the slightest interest in his child. We don't know in which quarter of the globe he is. Of course a child in a house is rather a nuisance, but in another year or two mother means to send him to a boarding-school.
'A child in the house.'
The words rang through the visitor's heart and brain. She began to listen for the faint tokens of the little one's presence. She meditated a raid upon the nursery, and a sally forth from it with the child into the old garden below, where she and he would enjoy laughter and play together. But a telegram called her suddenly away, and the quiet of the house and garden remained undisturbed.