And Baby Philip smiled a smile cherubic and murmured "Goo-o! ah-goo-o! for the first time, and Margaret almost smothered him with kisses, and was sure that never did mother have a comforter so sweet, a confidant so safe and yet so sympathetic. Where does a baby get its balm? In that Gilead whence it came? From the skilful physician who knows all needs and uses tiniest instruments sometimes to reach hidden wounds? Who knows? At any rate into Margaret's sore heart was coming day by day the healing that proceeds only from time and the touch of little hands. More and more, by her own volition, her world was coming to be bounded by the walls of her baby's room. Here at least she was safe from the thrusts of meddlesome gossip and the pin pricks of Gossip's handmaid--Curiosity. Here she could live the simple satisfying life that "maketh rich," and "addeth no sorrow" that she was not willing to bear. CHAPTER VIII A NEW RÔLE FOR RICHARD In all these months Margaret had not once heard from her husband. Rumors had come to her that he had not gone alone, but even this she could not verify, for she had ended the subject peremptorily with the informant who brought the story,--but the thorn implanted that day rankled. Her judgment and her knowledge of him told her it was true. The fiction of her husband's call abroad on urgent business served its purpose as a nominal explanation, but it deceived nobody. Every one knew that Victor De Jarnette had no large business interests in Europe, or anywhere else, and that he was not the man to make any great sacrifice for them if he had had, being a man of pleasure more than of affairs. The knowing raised their brows and smiled. The sympathetic said, "Poor Margaret!" She asked Richard De Jarnette only once if he had ever heard. No, he said, he had not. He had written and would let her know when the answer came. He did not tell her that his letter had been a bitter arraignment of Victor for his want of manliness in deserting his wife as he had done, and a stern demand that he should, for the sake of the De Jarnette name, if for no better reason, return or give some adequate explanation of his conduct--there could be no excuse. He had not spared him.