And if her voice had passion in it, his had pain. He crossed the room, and stood looking down on the sleeping baby, touching at length its cheek with his finger. He could have knelt, there and then, and wept over the child, and prayed, oh, how earnestly, that God would take it to Himself, not suffer it to live. Many and many a prayer had ascended from his heart in their earlier married days, that his wife might not bear him children; for he could only entail upon them an inheritance of shame.
"I don't think you have once taken him in your arms, Percival; you never kiss him. It's quite unnatural."
"I give my kisses in the dark," he laughed, as he returned to where she was sitting. And this was in a sense true; for once when he happened to be alone for an instant with the baby, he had clasped it and kissed it in a sort of delirious agony.
"You never had it in the Times, you know!"
"Never what?"
"Never announced its birth in the Times. Did you forget it?"
"It must have been very stupid of me," he remarked. "Never mind, Maude; he won't grow the less for the omission. When are you coming downstairs?"
"Mamma is in a rage about it; she says such neglect ought to be punished; and she knows you have done it on purpose."
"She is always in a rage with me, no matter what I do," returned Val, good-humouredly. "She hoped to be here at this time, and sway us all—you and me and the baby; and I stopped it. Ho, ho! young sir!"
The baby had wakened with a cry, and a watchful attendant came gliding in at the sound. Lord Hartledon left the room and went straight down to the Temple to Mr. Carr's chambers. He found him in all the bustle of departure from town. A cab stood at the foot of the stairs, and Mr. Carr's laundress, a queer old body with an inverted black bonnet, was handing the cabman a parcel of books.