ung arms and a scream of terror, when,
instead of the fair, blooming face of his mother with the auburn waves
of hair, the sallow cheeks, the tossed black hair, the great dark eyes
of Mrs Butt met his infantile gaze.

The howl that Billy gave in the first pang of that disappointment was
certainly out of place in a sick-room. Everard, with one glance at the
figure on the sofa, flinging itself into a sitting posture, and gazing
at him in an outraged frenzy, caught his boy in his arms and fled with
him upstairs.

"My's mummy! My's mummy! Billy wants my's mummy!" the child screamed.

His mummy was sitting over the fire in her own room, and her husband,
bursting in, deposited Billy on her lap. The sobs died away against her
breast, but Everard went down on his knees and smoothed and patted the
beloved little head, and talked the foolish language of consolation his
fatherhood had taught him.

"Ugly lady!" the child cried, in his broken voice. "Not Billy's
mummy--ugly lady!"

"Billy's is a pretty mummy, isn't she, darling?" the man tenderly said.

"Billy's mummy loves her precious boy," Lucilla murmured.

"'Oves daddy, too," the child sobbed, feeling the father's touch.

She smiled upon the kneeling young man. "Loves dear daddy, too," she
said.

It had been only a foolish flirtation--just the snatching at something
to fill his empty days. Everard Barett's heart had been his wife's all
along. He knew it for a certainty, looking at the woman and her child
together, kneeling before them, with a sudden conviction of his own
unworthiness, and folly, and absurdity.

"We all love each other, little man," he said. "If we three stick
together, we're all right, Boy Billy--we're all right, Luce."

He got upon his feet presently. "I'm going to the Works this afternoon,
dear," he said. "And after dinner I thought I'd go in and take a hand
at bridge with the Worleys. I'm afraid you'll have rather a time of it,
poor old girl."

"I'm afraid you will, when you come home again," Lucilla said.

He dropped his voice to a whisper. "I say, haven't we had almost
enough?" he asked. "A fortnight's a deuce of a time! She's all very
well, but it's jollier when we're alone, Luce. I want us to be alone
again."

When he came home to dinner, his wife met him in the hall. "Everard,"
she said, "it's come."

"In the name of heaven, what?"

"The Rigor. _You_ know. She can't move. Can't stir hand nor foot. All
the afternoon she was in a terr