wered.

"What children?"

"Master Robertson, of course, and Miss Winifred," I said, quite vexed
with his obstinacy. (I had asked her once if the baby was named after
her and she nodded and went away quickly.)

"See here, my girl," says he, "there's no good keeping this up for my
benefit. _I'm_ not going into a decline, you know. I know as well as
you do that she couldn't lose what she never had!"

"Never had!" I gasped. "She never had any children?"

"Of course not," he said, steadying me, for my knees got weak all of a
sudden. "That's what's made all the trouble--that's what's so
unfortunate! D'you mean to say you didn't know?"

I sank right down on the stairs. "But the pictures!" I burst out.

"If you mean that picture of Mr. Robertson Childress when he was a
little lad and the other one of him and his sister that died when a
baby, and chose to fancy they was _hers_," says he, pointing upstairs,
"it's no fault of mine, Miss Umbleby."

And no more it was. What with poor old Shipman's ramblings and the
doctor's words that I had twisted into what they never meant, I had got
myself into a fine pickle.

"But what shall I do, Mr. Hodges?" I said, stupid-like, with the
surprise and the shock of it. "It'd kill her, if I stopped now."

"That's for you to decide," said he, in his reserved, cold way, "I have
my silver to do."

Well, I did decide. I lay awake all night at it, and maybe I did
wrong, but I hadn't the heart to see the red go out of her cheek and
the little shy smile off her pretty mouth. It hurt no one, and the
mischief was done, anyway--there'd be no heir to Childerstone, now.
For five generations it had been the same--a son and a daughter to
every pair, and the old place about as dear to each son, as I made out,
as ever his wife or child could be. General Washington had stopped the
night there, and some great French general that helped the Americans
had come there for making plans to attack the British, and Colonel
Robertson Childress that then was had helped him. They had plenty of
English kin and some in the Southern States, but no friends near them,
on account of my mistress's husband having to live in Switzerland for
his health and his father dying young (as he did) so that his mother
couldn't bear the old place. But as soon as Mr. Robertson was told he
was cured and could live where he liked, he made for Childerstone and
brought his bride there--a stranger from an American family in