"I have loved," she said,
"Man is weak—God is dread."
The child can just run alone now, and lisp his mother's name in that sweet baby language which is earth's exquisite music to a mother's ears. He is a lovely little fellow, with big starry eyes, and soft gold hair and winning coaxing ways, which did as they would with all womankind, who had anything to do with him.
Lauraine kneels there for a moment under the great oak trees, and, holds him clasped to her heart.
"We will take him home, nurse," she says, looking up at the stately personage who is his guardian, and who adores him with all her soul.
"You can't carry him, my lady, and it is too far for him to walk," she says.
"Oh yes. Lady Etwynde and I will carry him between us," answers Lauraine. "Darling—how strong and big he gets! There, take mother's hand. Isn't he delighted, Lady Etwynde, to come with us?"
"He seems so," smiles her friend. "Farewell to philosophy now, Lauraine. King Baby puts everything else into the background."
"It is wonderful, is it not?" says Lauraine, with something of the old bright smile. "I wonder how I could ever have lived without him. He seems to hold all my heart in these two wee hands of his."
"I have often wondered," says Lady Etwynde, dreamily, "it seems an odd thing to say, perhaps, but I have often wondered at women who are mothers 'going wrong' as people express it. I could understand a wife, bad as it is; but to forsake your children your own flesh and blood for the sake of a man's love—well it must be a sort of delirious frenzy, I suppose. And do you know it is not always flighty women—careless women—who astonish us by a daux pas. It is sometimes the quietest and most unlikely."
"Yes," answers Lauraine very quietly; "these cases are so totally different to the lookers-on. They only see the result, not what leads up to it."