It was curious that her jealous hate should still be mixed with pain, and that the treachery of her friend should still have power to wound her, when greater things than friendship were at stake, but she had been very near loving the Vicomtesse, and she had trusted her from the first time that she had seen her. For no other woman before had she ever had quite the same feeling.... Well, it only proved that even liars could sometimes speak the truth, for Armand had said over and over again that no woman could be true to another. So that was the last of her illusions. There was nothing left to live for, and every day she was getting stronger.

A door opened and shut at the end of the corridor, but in the short interval there came the cry of an infant. Horatia sat up intent and listening—half rose, and leant back again. She was determined not to yield to the absurd weakness of being unable to sit still and hear Maurice cry. There were plenty of people to quiet him, and besides, in such a world he might as well get used to crying ... It was no good. She got up, unlocked her door, and listened. The sound had ceased.

Horatia was very far now from feeling any kind of repulsion for the baby. All the strange obsession of her illness had vanished that afternoon when Martha had had the temerity to leave him on her lap. The living warmth of his tiny body had unsealed the frozen spring of tenderness, and for that reason it was very seldom that she allowed herself to take him in her arms. He was Armand's son, and she was determined not to forget it—Armand's, who had deceived her and lied to her from the beginning. With the shock of her husband's treachery, the realisation that the unborn child was his as well as hers, had seemed to burn itself into her consciousness. It had wrung from her the cry, "I hate you, I hate your child!" She did not hate Armand now, for, as she had told him, he was dead to her, and she did not hate Maurice, but he was not the child of her dreams. He was Armand's son, a stranger and a foreigner, a captive already to the family tradition. He would grow up French in nurture, French in thought; he would grow up like his father. And this was the child who was to have been welcomed into a world wholly English, prepared for him by his mother. She could hardly bear to enter the nursery now, to hear French spoken, where only English was to have been, and to know that the press against the wall remained closed, because his nurses could not or would not dress him in the English babyclothes laid there lovingly so short a time before. The beautiful copy of the Raphael Madonna was all that remained to remind her of a child and his mother, and a nursery that might have been.

(4)

The reason for the abrupt cessation of Armand's visits at the end of October was not known to Madame de Vigerie for some days. Then she had a note from him telling her the news, but without any hint of what had occasioned the premature arrival of his heir. The Vicomtesse was greatly perturbed on Horatia's account (though understanding that she was now out of danger), and she went herself to the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon to inquire, and sent her flowers, more than once or twice, having no suspicion how those flowers would have been received had Armand allowed them to reach his wife's sick-room. When Madame de Vigerie heard that Horatia was well enough to receive an intimate friend for a few minutes she called again, fully expecting to be admitted, since she was well aware that she herself was the only friend with the slightest claim to real intimacy with the English girl. Much to her disappointment a message was brought that Madame la Comtesse was too tired to see her that day. There was, however, no hope expressed that she would call again, and Laurence de Vigerie drove away feeling rather dashed.

Possibly, she told herself, Horatia was shocked at her temerity in venturing to the house in spite of Armand's prohibition. As a matter of fact the Vicomtesse considered that she had disposed of that prohibition, about the necessity of which she had more than once had doubts. She was sure now, from what she had heard, that the reason for the secrecy of Armand's visits had gone—but with its vanishing had ceased the visits, too. For nine weeks she neither saw him nor heard from him. And it was during those weeks that she learnt to miss him more and more intensely, to hope that each succeeding winter's day might bring him, as of old.

The winter's day which brought him, at length, was the second of the New Year. Paris was ringing with the festivities of the season, and Madame de Vigerie's salon was full of gifts and flowers. Into this warm, lamplit, scented atmosphere, when her other visitors had departed, came at last Armand de la Roche-Guyon, pale, almost grim, and empty-handed.

Laurence de Vigerie's heart moved in her breast to meet him, and she made no attempt to disguise that she was glad.

"My dear friend," she exclaimed, giving him both her hands, "where have you been these years—these centuries? And how is Horatia?"

"She is better, thank you," replied Armand in a curious tone, as he lifted her hands to his lips. "And I ... O, I have been playing the devoted husband ... to very small purpose."