white object that had come over a boundary wall hard by. It proved to be
a tiny note wrapped round a stone. Lady Icenway opened it and read it,
and immediately (no doubt, with a stern fixture of her queenly
countenance) walked hastily along the terrace, and through the door into
the shrubbery, whence the note had come. The man who had first married
her stood under the bushes before her. It was plain from his appearance
that something had gone wrong with him.

'You notice a change in me, my best-beloved,' he said. 'Yes, Maria--I
have lost all the wealth I once possessed--mainly by reckless gambling in
the Continental hells to which you banished me. But one thing in the
world remains to me--the child--and it is for him that I have intruded
here. Don't fear me, darling! I shall not inconvenience you long; I
love you too well! But I think of the boy day and night--I cannot help
it--I cannot keep my feeling for him down; and I long to see him, and
speak a word to him once in my lifetime!'

'But your oath?' says she. 'You promised never to reveal by word or
sign--'

'I will reveal nothing. Only let me see the child. I know what I have
sworn to you, cruel mistress, and I respect my oath. Otherwise I might
have seen him by some subterfuge. But I preferred the frank course of
asking your permission.'

She demurred, with the haughty severity which had grown part of her
character, and which her elevation to the rank of a peeress had rather
intensified than diminished. She said that she would consider, and would
give him an answer the day after the next, at the same hour and place,
when her husband would again be absent with his pack of hounds.

The gentleman waited patiently. Lady Icenway, who had now no conscious
love left for him, well considered the matter, and felt that it would be
advisable not to push to extremes a man of so passionate a heart. On the
day and hour she met him as she had promised to do.

'You shall see him,' she said, 'of course on the strict condition that
you do not reveal yourself, and hence, though you see him, he must not
see you, or your manner might betray you and me. I will lull him into a
nap in the afternoon, and then I will come to you here, and fetch you
indoors by a private way.'

The unfortunate father, whose misdemeanour had recoiled upon his own head
in a way he could not have foreseen, promised to adhere to her
instructions, and waited in the shrubberies till the mo