"She married Arden Court, not me," he said to himself; "and then she tried to have Arden Court and her old lover into the bargain. Would she have run away with him, I wonder, if he had had time to persuade her that day? Can any woman be pure, when a man dares ask her to leave her husband?"
And then the locket that man wore—"From Clarissa"—was not that damning evidence?
He thought of these things again and again, with a weary iteration—thought of them as he watched the mother walking slowly to and fro with her baby in her arms. That picture would surely live in his mind for ever, he thought. Never again, never any more, in all the days to come, could he take his wife back to his heart; but, O God, how dearly he had loved her, and how desolate his home would be without her! Those two years of their married life seemed to be all his existence; looking back beyond that time, his history seemed, like Viola's, "A blank, my lord." And he was to live the rest of his life without her. But for that ever-present anxiety about the child, which was in some wise a distraction, the thought of these things might have driven him mad.
At last, after those two weeks of uncertainty, there came a day when Dr. Ormond pronounced the boy out of danger—on the very high-road to recovery, in fact.
"I would say nothing decided till I could speak with perfect certainty," he said. "You may make yourselves quite happy now."
Clarissa knelt down and kissed the good old doctor's hand, raining tears upon it in a passion of gratitude. He seemed to her in that moment something divine, a supernal creature who, by the exercise of his power, had saved her child.
Dr. Ormond lifted her up, smiling at her emotion.
"Come, come, my dear soul, this is hysterical," he said, in his soothing paternal way, patting her shoulder gently as he spoke; "I always meant to save the little fellow; though it has been a very severe bout, I admit, and we have had a tussle for it. And now I expect to see your roses come back again. It has been a hard time for you as well as for baby."
When Mr. Granger went out of the room with the physician presently, Dr.
Ormond said gravely,—
"The little fellow is quite safe, Mr. Granger; but you must look to your wife now."