Lady Adela bent over her child, as if to do something to its cap: her face had flushed blood-red.
"Charles Cleveland is in India," she said. "He is doing well, very well. My husband was—was very kind to him, and pushes him forward. He is kind to every one."
Rising rather abruptly from the bench, she gave the baby to the nurse and went into the house. Her mother, standing at one of the windows of the large drawing-room, turned round as she entered.
"What have you been doing to flush your face so, Adela?" called out my lady—for it was glowing still.
"Oh, nothing: the sun perhaps," answered Adela, carelessly.
"You were talking with Sir Turtle Kite."
"Yes, he was looking at baby, and asking me his name. I told him his father's—Francis."
"Ah," said Lady Acorn, with her irrepressible propensity for bringing up disagreeable reminiscences, "I remember the time when you would not have your child's name Francis, because it was your husband's."
"Oh, mamma, don't! That was in the mistaken years of long ago."
"And I hope you were civil to Sir Turtle," continued my lady: "you seemed to leave him very abruptly. He is a funny little round-headed man, and nothing but an alderman; but he means well. Think what your fate might have been now—but for his—his clemency."