n?"

"Only that I should be glad if you would tell Chifney he must find some
other horse to lead the gallops."

Ormiston turned his head.

"I see--you wish the horse sold," he said, over his shoulder.

Katherine looked down at the sleeping baby, its round head, crowned by
that delicious crest of silky hair, cuddled in against her breast. Then
she looked in her brother's eyes full and steadily.

"No," she answered. "I don't want it sold, I want it shot, by you,
here, to-night."

"By Jove!" the young man exclaimed, rising hastily and standing in
front of her.

Katherine gazed up at him, and held the child a little closer to her
breast.

"I have been alone with my baby. Don't you suppose I see how it has
come about?" she asked.

"Oh, damn it all!" Ormiston cried. "I prayed, at least, you might be
spared thinking of that."

He flung himself down on the sofa again--while the baby clenching its
tiny fist, stretched and murmured in its sleep--and bowed himself
together, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

"I'm at the bottom of it. It's all my fault," he said. "I am haunted by
the thought of that day and night, for if ever one man loved another I
loved Richard. And yet if I hadn't been so cursedly keen about the
horse all this might never have happened. Oh! if you only knew how
often I've wished myself dead since that ghastly morning. You must hate
me, Kitty. You've cause enough. Yet how the deuce could I foresee what
would come about?"

For the moment Katherine's expression softened. She laid her left hand
very gently on his bowed head.

"I could never hate you, dear old man," she said. "You are innocent of
Richard's death. But this last thing is different." Her voice became
fuller and deeper in tone. "And whether I am equally innocent of his
child's disfigurement, God only knows--if there is a God, which
perhaps, just now, I had better doubt, lest I should blaspheme too
loudly, hoping my bitter words might reach His hearing."

Yet further disturbed in the completeness of it's comfort, as it would
seem, by the seriousness of her voice, the baby's mouth puckered. It
began to fret. Katherine rose and stood rocking it, soothing it--a
queenly young figure in her clinging gray and white draperies, which
the instreaming sunshine touched, as she moved, to a delicate warmth of
colour.

"Hush, my pretty lamb," she crooned--and then softly yet fiercely to
Ormiston, "You understand, I wish it.