For hours after he left the anteroom Bootles kept out of every one’s way—indeed until Lacy came to tell him that Gilchrist was dead. Then, it being close upon the hour of eleven, he went and knocked at the door of Mignon’s nursery. The nurse opened it a few inches, and seeing who it was, set it open wide.
“Is Miss Mignon asleep?” he asked.
“Yes, sir; hours ago,” the woman answered.
He passed into the inner room, where the child was lying. A candle burned on a table beside the cot, casting its light on the fair baby face, now flushed in sleep, and on the tangled golden curls. Both her arms lay outside the eider coverlet, one hand grasping the whip with which he had ridden and won that day, the other holding the card of the races. Bootles bent and scanned her face closely, but not one trace could he discern of likeness to the father—not one—and he drew a deep breath of relief that it was so.
Well he remembered Lacy’s puzzled scrutiny of the year-old baby. “There’s a likeness, but I don’t know where to plant it.” If there had been a likeness to Gilchrist then, it had now passed away; and as Bootles satisfied himself that it was so, his love for her, which during the last few hours had hung trembling in the balance, though he would hardly have acknowledged it, even to himself, re-asserted itself, and rose up in his heart stronger than ever. Just then she moved uneasily in her sleep.
“Lal, where is Bootles?” she asked. Then, after a pause, “Gotted another headache?” And an instant later, “Miss Grace said Mignon was to be very kind to Bootles.”
Bootles bent down and kissed her, and she awoke.
“Bootles,” she said, in sleepy surprise; then, imperatively, “Take me up.”
So Bootles carried her to the fire in the adjoining room, where the nurse was sewing a fresh frill of lace on the pretty velvet frock, with its braidings of scarlet and gold, which she had worn that day.
“Lal said Mignon wasn’t to go to Bootles,” she said, reproachfully.