aw. She answered me with
a smile of extraordinary significance, and told me that I must have very
little idea of what her relations with Beatrice were; but I must do
her the justice to add that she went on to make herself a little more
comprehensible by saying that it was quite reason enough for her sister
not to be alarmed that Mark would be sure to be. He was always nervous
about the child, and as they were predestined by nature to take opposite
views, the only thing for Beatrice was to cultivate a false optimism. If
Mark were not there, she would not be at all easy. I remembered what
he had said to me about their dealings with Dolcino,--that between them
they would put an end to him; but I did not repeat this to Miss Ambient:
the less so that just then her brother emerged from the house, carrying
his child in his arms. Close behind him moved his wife, grave and pale;
the boy's face was turned over Ambient's shoulder, towards his mother.
We got up to receive the group, and as they came near us Dolcino turned
round. I caught, on his enchanting little countenance, a smile of
recognition, and for the moment would have been quite content with it.
Miss Ambient, however, received another impression, and I make haste to
say that her quick sensibility, in which there was something maternal,
argues that, in spite of her affectations, there was a strain of
kindness in her. "It won't do at all--it won't do at all," she said to
me under her breath. "I shall speak to Mark about the doctor."

The child was rather white, but the main difference I saw in him was
that he was even more beautiful than the day before. He had been dressed
in his festal garments,--a velvet suit and a crimson sash,--and he
looked like a little invalid prince, too young to know condescension,
and smiling familiarly on his subjects.

"Put him down, Mark, he's not comfortable," Mrs. Ambient said.

"Should you like to stand on your feet, my boy?" his father asked.

"Oh, yes; I 'm remarkably well," said the child.

Mark placed him on the ground; he had shining, pointed slippers, with
enormous bows. "Are you happy now, Mr. Ambient?"

"Oh, yes, I am particularly happy," Dolcino replied. The words were
scarcely out of his mouth when his mother caught him up, and in a
moment, holding him on her knees, she took her place on the bench where
Miss Ambient and I had been sitting. This young lady said something
to her brother, in consequence of which the two wandered