urned cold, and felt it necessary to
stiffen his spine when he heard his servant's answer and the tone in
which it was made.

"Her ladyship, my lord--her ladyship is very low. The doctors do not
leave her."

"Her ladyship?"

The man stepped back deferentially. The door of the morning-room had
been opened, and old Lady Maria Bayne stood on the threshold. Her
worldly air of elderly gaiety had disappeared. She looked a hundred. She
was almost dilapidated. She had allowed to relax themselves the springs
which held her together and ordinarily supplied her with sprightly
movement.

"Come here!" she said.

When he entered the room, aghast, she shut the door.

"I suppose I ought to break it to you gently," she said shakily, "but I
shall do no such thing. It's too much to expect of any woman who has
gone through what I have during these last three days. The creature is
dying; she may be dead now."

She sank on the sofa and began to wipe away pouring tears. Her old
cheeks were pale and her handkerchief showed touches of rose-pink on its
dampness. She was aware of their presence, but was utterly indifferent.
Walderhurst stared at her haggard disorder and cleared his throat,
finding himself unable to speak without doing so.

"Will you have the goodness to tell me," he said with weird stiffness,
"what you are talking about?"

"About Emily Walderhurst," she answered. "The boy was born yesterday,
and she has been sinking ever since. She cannot possibly last much
longer."

"She!" he gasped, turning lead colour. "Cannot possibly last,--Emily?"

The wrench and shock were so unnatural that they reached that part of
his being where human feeling was buried under selfishness and inhuman
conventionality. He spoke, and actually thought, of Emily first.

Lady Maria continued to weep shamelessly.

"I am over seventy," she said, "and the last three days have punished me
quite enough for anything I may have done since I was born. I have been
in hell, too, James. And, when she could think at all, she has only
thought of you and your miserable child. I can't imagine what is the
matter with a woman when she can care for a man to such an extent. Now
she has what she wants,--she's dying for you."

"Why wasn't I told?" he asked, still with the weird and slow stiffness.

"Because she was a sentimental fool, and was afraid of disturbing you.
She ought to have ordered you home and kept you dancing attendance, and
treated you to hysteri