Again he wondered whether she had suspected the hatred within him. Surely a creature of her intuitions and sympathies must know. And if she did know, and, knowing, faced the facts, trying to adjust the balance, piecing together the fragments of broken lives, was it not his duty, however painful, to help her and the man she had married? And perhaps she had foreseen that any peril threatening an object dear to both brothers might serve to unite them. The woman who had whirled them asunder must cherish the hope that she alone could bring them together.
When the hour came, when he was alone with Archibald at midnight, straining his ears for that thin, querulous wail of the newly born, he forgot everything except that Betty might be taken away. The doctor bustled in from time to time, cheery and sanguine at first, but as the hours passed betraying uneasiness and anxiety. Towards morning, when the whole world seemed to have grown chill and dreary, he asked for a consultation; and a servant was sent hot-foot for the most famous accoucheur in Harley Street.
Archibald rushed upstairs. He crawled down them a few minutes later, ghastly, trembling, the scarecrow of the prosperous Rector of St. Anne's. Mark, as white as he, seized his arm.
"Well, well, how is she? That fool of a doctor has exaggerated. They always make out everything to be more serious than it is."
"She is going, she is going," the husband muttered.
Mark shook him violently.
"Archie, you must pull yourself together. Do you hear?"
"It's a judgment, a judgment."
"What do you say?"
"I never told her about those two sermons. I'm a coward, a coward. You despise me—I have felt it."