Mrs. Despard will always reproach herself for not having rushed towards the white face that peered through the glass door. She could have done something—anything. So she thinks, but I am not sure.
"And it was none of it true, Bill," she said piteously, when, Mabel and Gracie safely tucked up in bed, she told him all about it. "I don't know how she could. No dead lover—no retired tea-broker—no pretty house, and sweet-brier hedge with ... and no Baby."
"She was a lying lunatic," said Bill. "I never liked her. Hark! what's that? All right, Love-a-duck—daddy's here!"
He went up the stairs three at a time to catch up his baby, who had a way of wandering, with half-awake wailings, out of her crib in the small hours.
"All right, Kiddie-winks, daddy's got you," he murmured, coming back into the drawing-room with the little soft, warm, flannelly bundle cuddled close to him.
"She's asleep again already," he said, settling her comfortably in his arms. "Don't worry any more about that Eden girl, Molly—she's not worth it."
His wife knelt beside him and buried her face against his waistcoat and against the little flannel night-gown.
"Oh, Bill," she said, and her voice was thick with tears, "don't say things like that. Don't you see? It was cruel, cruel! She was all alone—no mother, no sister, no lover. She was made so that no one could ever love her. And she wanted love so much—so frightfully much, so that she just had to pretend that she had it."
"And what about the Baby?" asked Mr. Despard, taking one arm from his own baby to pass it round his wife's shoulders. "Don't be a darling idiot, Molly. What about the Baby?"