baby would be fashioned in his image; and she accepted the fact
philosophically, as a part of her life from which there was no appeal.

From the first, the baby was a quiet child. Apparently he shared his
mother's apathy towards all things, and he lay by the hour in a sluggish
drowse, leaving his mother free to allow her thoughts to wander at will.
They did wander, too. Lying there, passive, in her luxurious room,
Beatrix's mind scaled the heights of heaven, sounded the depths of hell.
The one had lain within her reach; but she had never known it until too
late. The other had crossed her path in the past; it was opening before
her future. Her baby boy, so plainly created in the physical likeness of
his father, could not have failed to receive something of his moral
nature. She quailed before the grim promise of the future and, drawing
the blanket over her face, she tried to shut out the sight and the
thought of her child. And, in the first weeks of her wedded life, she
had so longed for the time when a baby head should cuddle into the curve
of her arm! At the thought, she pulled the blanket away again
impetuously and, of its own accord, her arm tightened around the little
bundle of flannels. He was not entirely Lorimer's child; he was her
own, her very own. He must have inherited something of the sturdy
constitution, the steady nerves of the Danes. The stronger, better blood
was bound to triumph; and she would work unceasingly to oust that other
taint from his nature. He was her child; she loved him, and she would
give her life to the training which should make him able to wipe out the
stain upon his father's record.

July was burning the white asphalt streets, before Beatrix was strong
enough to be moved to Monomoy. Bobby dropped in to see her, the
afternoon before she left town.

"Funny little beggar!" he observed, as he sat down opposite Beatrix and
gravely inspected the baby in her arms.

"What do you think of him?" Beatrix asked, while she smoothed down the
wholly superfluous skirt and then, tilting the baby forward,
straightened the frills on the back of his little yoke.

"Oh, he's not so bad as he might be," Bobby responded encouragingly, as
he snapped his fingers in the face of the child who stared back at him
impassively.

The mother's face flushed.

"What do you mean, Bobby?" she asked a little sharply.

Too late, Bobby saw his blunder. In his consternation, he blundered yet
more.

"I had no idea