Court Netherleigh. Mrs. Henry Wood

yes—if it has to be done," conceded she. "I'm sure there's no necessity for it. Let Wilkinson come up."

      Lady Acorn's sharp red nose turned purple. She had listened in surprise. Saying nothing to Adela, she trotted into the dressing-room, and shut the door.

      "What's this, nurse—about the child being baptized?"

      "I believe it is going to be done, my lady. Mr. Grubb has just said a word to me."

      "Is it so ill as that?"

      "Well, no, I did not think it was," acknowledged the woman. "Dr. Dove did not much like its look this morning; I saw that. I suppose he spoke to Mr. Grubb more fully than to me."

      "Do you think it is in any danger?"

      The nurse paused before replying. "One can never be quite sure of these very young infants. When it was born, I thought it a nice healthy little thing; yesterday it seemed quiet and peeky, and wailed a bit; this morning it seems anything but well, and does not take its food. Still, my lady, I can't say that it is in danger."

      Lady Acorn nodded her head and her bonnet two or three times, as if not satisfied with affairs in general, and went back to her daughter's room.

      The young clergyman came up; things were made ready; and they gathered round in a group at the bedside, kneeling down for the short preparatory prayers used in private baptism. When they arose, the clergyman took the child in his arms from Grace, who had held it.

      "Name this child."

      "George," promptly spoke the mother from the bed, her tone giving emphasis to the word. And Francis Grubb's face flushed as he heard it. Ah, what pain was often his!

      The short service was soon over. Mr. Wilkinson departed for his church; Lady Acorn and Grace followed him. The nurse had gone back to the dressing-room. Mr. Grubb stood by the bed in which the quiet child had again been laid.

      "I thought you were going to church?" said Lady Adela.

      "Yes; directly." He wanted especially to go to church that day; to return thanks to God for the mercy vouchsafed him in the preservation of his wife. Though, indeed, he had not waited to be in church to do that.

      "How quiet the baby was all through it!" cried Adela.

      "Very quiet. Too quiet, your mother says."

      "Mamma says all sorts of things when she is in a temper, as you have learnt by this time, and she is in one this morning," was Adela's light, and not over-dutiful remark. Not but that it was true.

      Mr. Grubb had taken the child in his arms, and stood looking down upon it. Save that its eyes were open and that it breathed, it seemed still enough for death. He did not understand babies, but he did think this one was unnaturally quiet.

      "Why are you looking at him so attentively?" asked Adela, by-and-by.

      "I don't think he can be well."

      "But—you don't think he is ill, do you?" returned she after a pause, and speaking quickly.

      "Adela, I do not know. He seems to me to have changed a little in the last half-hour, since I first came in. Of course I may be mistaken."

      "Suppose you send for Dr. Dove?"

      "I can send if you like: he has only just gone, you know. The nurse does not seem to be"—alarmed, he was about to say, but changed the word—"anxious; so all may be well."

      He put the baby in its place, and Lady Adela raised her head to look at it. "He gets paler, I think," she observed; "and, as you say, he is very, very quiet. Poor little thing! he has no strength yet."

      "He cannot have much of that," remarked Mr. Grubb. "The nurse says she cannot get him to take his food. If he does not, he must sink, Adela."

      Their eyes met. There was certainly no reproach in his, only a settled look of pain. Adela did not want her baby to die, and the fear of it was beginning to trouble her; she was aware that, looking at matters from their point of view, her enemies', she might not be altogether unconscious of meriting some reproach. Back she lay on the pillow again, and burst into tears.

      Mr. Grubb went round, bent down, and sheltered her head on his breast. "I don't want him to die," she sobbed.

      "Won't you try to save him?" he whispered in his tenderly persuasive tones, as he held her face close to his own.

      "But the trouble!—and the sacrifice. Oh, how cross and contrary the world sometimes is!"

      "Your own child and mine, Adela! It would be only a little sacrifice, a little trouble. When he gets older, he will repay you love for love."

      A pause. "I suppose you will be very cross with me if I don't, Francis."

      "Am I ever cross with you! I should grieve for the child, if he died; I should grieve for your grief, for I know you would feel it. Oh, my darling, won't you try to save him? To do so must be right in God's sight."

      She cried silently for a minute longer, her wet cheek lying contentedly against his. "Perhaps I will," she whispered in his ear. "For his sake, you know."

      "For all our sakes, Adela."

      "Put him nearer to me, please. I will look at him again—whether he does seem ill. And how late you will be at church!"

      "Not very: the bell is going yet," said Mr. Grubb. He placed the infant where she could look at it closely; gave her a farewell kiss, and departed. Adela rang for the nurse.

      "You may throw away all the stupid gruel, nurse. I shall not let the baby have any more of it."

       CHAPTER IX.

      JOSEPH HORN'S TESTIMONY.

      "Some one is waiting to see you, sir," said one of Mr. Grubb's servants to him, as he entered the house on his return from church.

      "Who is it?"

      "Mr. Dalrymple's man, sir. He has been waiting nearly an hour."

      Reuben came forward from the back of the hall. The moment Mr. Grubb caught sight of his face, usually so full of healthy bloom, now pale and woe-begone, he was seized with a presentiment of evil.

      "Come into the library, Reuben," he said. "Have you brought ill news of any kind?" he added, shutting the door. "What is it?"

      And to make matters more intelligible to you, reader, we will go back to the past Friday night, when Robert Dalrymple left his lodgings in the company of Mr. Piggott, leaving poor Reuben in distress and despair.

      Reuben sat up the livelong night. The light dawned after the brief interval of darkness, very brief in June, the sun came out, the cries and bustle in the streets gradually set in, and London had begun another day. At six o'clock Reuben lay down on his bed for an hour, and then got himself a bit of breakfast—which he could not eat. His master did not come.

      Fearing he knew not what, and attaching more importance, in his vague uneasiness, to Robert's having stayed out than he might have done at another time, at nine o'clock Reuben betook himself to Mr. Piggott's. That gentleman did not live in very fashionable lodgings, and his address was usually given at his club, not there. Reuben, however, knew it. Some time before, Reuben had gone on a fishing tour, to catch what information he could as to the private concerns of Mr. Piggott and Colonel Haughton, and had found out where each lived.

      The slipshod servant who came to the door could say nothing as to whether Mr. Dalrymple was staying the night there; all she knew was, that Mr. Piggott "warn't up yet." Reuben inquired as to the locality of Mr. Piggott's chamber, went up to it without opposition, and knocked at the door; a sharp, loud knock.

      "Who's there?"

      Another knock, sharper still.

      "Come in."

      Reuben walked in at once. "Sir,"