htened look.

"The baby, sir!"

"What?"

Alas! there had been an heir of the house of Henderson for just two
hours; and Margaret was not sustaining herself.

Why go on? Henderson was beside himself; stricken with grief, enraged,
I believe, as well, at the thought of his own impotence. Messengers were
despatched, a consultation was called. The best skill of the city, at
any cost, was at Margaret's bedside. Was there anything, then, that
money could not do? How weak we are!

The next day the patient was no better, she was evidently sinking. The
news went swiftly round the city. It needed a servant constantly at
the door to answer the stream of sympathetic inquirers. Reporters were
watching the closed house from the opposite pavement. I undertook to
satisfy some of them who gained the steps and came forward, civil enough
and note-books in hand, when the door was opened. This intrusion of
curiosity seemed so dreadful.

The great house was silent. How vain and empty and pitiful it all seemed
as I wandered alone through the gorgeous apartments! What a mockery it
all was of the tragedy impending above-stairs--the approach on list-shod
feet of the great enemy! Let us not be unjust. He would have come just
the same if his prey had lain in a farmhouse among the hills, or in a
tenement-house in C Street.

A day and a night, and another day--and then! It was Miss Forsythe who
came down to me, with strained eyes and awe in her face. It needed no
words. She put her face upon my shoulder, and sobbed as if her heart
were broken.

I could not stay in the house. I went out into the streets, the streets
brilliant in the sun of an autumn day, into the town, gay, bustling,
crowded, pulsing with vigorous life. How blue the sky was! The sparrows
twittered in Madison Square, the idlers sat in the sun, the children
chased their hoops about the fountain.

I wandered into the club. The news had preceded me there. More than
one member in the reading-room grasped my hand, with just a word of
sympathy. Two young fellows, whom I had last seen at the Henderson
dinner, were seated at a small table.

"It's rough, Jack"--the speaker paused, with a match in his hand--"it's
rough. I'll be if she was not the finest woman I ever knew."

My wife and I were sitting in the orchestra stalls of the Metropolitan.
The opera was Siegfried. At the close of the first act, as we turned
to the house, we saw Carmen enter a box, radiant, in white. Henderson