'The child has adopted you, Lance,' said Felix, when he saw Gerald riding down to breakfast in the new uncle's arms, with an arm round his neck and his head on his shoulder. 'Should you not like him to be your godfather, Gerald?'

'No, Gerald, that can only belong to Mr. Travis, and your uncle Felix.'

'Travis, of course,' said Felix; 'but for me, it would be too like a parent, and—' he paused, but went on: 'You ought to have that tie—you who brought out that final saying from his father. Never let him forget it. It is so perfectly the spirit in which to meet the unavoidable.'

He certainly had a power of transmuting into comfort all he heard of this beloved brother. It had been decided that the boy should be admitted into the church on this, his first Sunday. Ferdinand was anxious that it should be, like his own baptism, his first sight of the interior of a church, and had been preparing him for it all the way home, so that he knew a good deal more than had yet been made to adhere to his cousin Kester, and his replies had a flavour of St. Matthew's that delighted Clement. It did not seem right that the thing should be done in a corner, and in the first strangeness numbers would make less difference than after he had learnt to know the faces round him; so they resolved to face the full congregation at once, large as it was apt to be in the afternoon; for there had of late arisen among the young men of Ewmouth a fashion of walking out to church at Vale Leston, attracted partly by the choir and partly by the preaching.

It was too long for Gerald's feeble limbs to be kept standing, and though he was tall for his age, Ferdinand Travis took him in his arms where the questions and replies startled the unprepared. 'Who baptized this child?' when the answer, 'I did,' came from the jet-black beard of the great American merchant, more like a Spanish grandee than ever; and 'With what matter was this child baptized?' was responded to 'With water'—there was a thought of the blood that had oozed forth and mingled with the 'lucid flood,' and Clement's voice trembled with emotion as he certified that all was well done, and as he signed the cross, it was where, in anticipation, Ferdinand had marked the rood, and as Geraldine's eye traced the little coronal that the cruel knife had scored, her whole heart went into the thought.

'Thus outwardly and visibly
We seal thee for His own;
And may the brow that bears the cross
Hereafter bear the crown.'

Strange was the entry in the parish register regarding the child whom his uncle treated as heir of his house and name, but at whom every one looked with compassionate misgiving, so weird were his great pensive dark eyes, so thin his cheeks, so feeble his movements, so complete the contrast to his sturdy cousin Christopher, the one all mind and the other all body.

Felix wished for London advice for him, and, as there was to be a clerical meeting on Tuesday at Richard May's, proposed to drive with Clement as far as Stoneborough to ask the two physicians what they would recommend. Lancelot only discovered this intention just as he was stepping into the boat in which Bernard was going to take him to Ewmouth to meet the train—probably he fancied his face quite impassive, but it was far too transparent for him, and there was a curious gust of expression passing over it when Felix asked whether he had any commands for Stoneborough. 'N-not—at least, my—my—remember me to them. That's all! good-bye.'

Then he expended his energies on the oars, and snubbed Bernard into silent smoking, meanwhile he was calculating the increase of means that had accrued to Felix, and would surely render marriage possible.

Felix found his call happily timed, for Dr. May received him with, 'That's right. Just as the last patient has made his exit. Nay—not the last. I fear your side does not seem to have mended.'