and intelligence that had
accompanied the losses of memory, he found his remarks set aside like
the chatter of a foolish child.

If maternity would indeed exorcise the Invader, Milly had lost no time
in beginning the exorcism. And she did believe that somehow it would;
not because the doctor said so, but because she could not believe God
would let a child's mother be changed in that way, at any rate while she
was bearing it. To do so would be to make it more motherless than any
little living thing on earth. Milly had always been quietly but deeply
religious, and she struggled hard against the feeling of peculiar
injustice in this strange affliction that had been sent to her. She
prayed earnestly to God every night to help and protect her and her
child, and the period of six or seven months, at which the "change" had
come before, passed without a sign of it. In April a little boy was
born. They called him Antonio, after a learned Italian, a friend and
teacher of Ian's.

The advent of the child did something to explain the comparative
seclusion into which Mrs. Stewart had retired, and the curious dulling
of that brilliant personality of hers. The Master of Durham was among
the few of Mrs. Stewart's admirers who declined to recognize the change
in her. He had been attracted by the girl Milly Flaxman, by her gentle,
shy manners and pretty face, combined with her reputation for
scholarship; the brilliant Invader had continued to attract him in
another way. The difference between the two, if faced, would have been
disagreeably mysterious. He preferred to say and think that there was
none; Mrs. Stewart was probably not very well.

Milly's shyness made it peculiarly awkward for her to find herself in
possession of a number of friends whom she would not have chosen
herself, and of whose doings and belongings she was in complete
ignorance. However, if she gave offence she was unconscious of it, and
it came very naturally to her to shrink back into the shadow of her
household gods. Ian and the baby were almost sufficient in themselves to
fill her life. There was just room on the outskirts of it for a few
relations and old friends, and Aunt Beatrice still held her honored
place. But it was through Aunt Beatrice that she was first to learn the
feel of a certain dull heartache which was destined to grow upon her
like some fell disease, a thing of ceaseless pain.

She was especially anxious to get Aunt Beatrice, who had been in A