Those aching doubts which he felt as he watched beside his wife’s sick-bed had vanished like clouds before the sun. Who could doubt the happiness of the mother, absorbed in her firstborn? Who could doubt the love of the wife, looking up at her husband with such tender welcome as he bent over her shoulder to take the little curled-up fist in his, unfold the crumpled fingers, and press them to his lips? “You are very fond of him, Martin?” she asked, with an often repeated inquiry, knowing what the answer would be. “Fond of him! After you he is all that I have in this world--except Allegra, who will float away into a world of her own by-and-by, and belong to us no more.” “After me! He ought to be first, Martin--your son, your heir, your second self in the days to come. He ought to have the first place in your heart, Martin, for he is your future.” “No one is first but you.” He dropped the baby hand, and took his wife’s head between his hands, and lifted the fair young forehead, looking down at it fondly before he stooped to kiss the soft clustering hair and pencilled brows and ivory temples, with more than a lover’s passion. CHAPTER XIV. “SAY THE FALSE CHARGE WAS TRUE.” The Baynhams’ dinner-party was a function to be anticipated with horror, and undergone with resignation. For the first week after the acceptance of the invitation the ceremony had seemed so far off that it could be talked about lightly, and even made an occasion for mirth--Allegra giving her own little sketch of what a dinner at Myrtle Lodge would be like--the drawing-room with its wealth of chair-backs and photograph albums, and the water-colour landscapes which Mrs. Baynham had painted while she was at a finishing school at Plymouth, never having touched brush or pencil since--and Mrs. Baynham’s rosy-cheeked nieces from Truro, who always appeared on the scene of any festivity. Yes, one could tell beforehand what the entertainment would be like. One thing they did not know, however, Mrs. Baynham having been discreetly silent on the subject. They did not know that they were to meet the Glenaveril family in full force, the doctor’s wife being of opinion that a friendly dinner-party was the panacea for all parish quarrels and small antagonisms, and that by judiciously bringing the Crowthers and the Disneys together at a well-spread board, and in the genial atmosphere of her unspacious drawing-room, she could bring about an end of the feud, or tacit coldness, which had divided the Angler’s Nest and Glenaveril since Colonel Disney’s home-coming. It was a disappointment to this worthy woman to see Vansittart Crowther, when Colonel and Mrs. Disney were announced, start and glare as if a mad dog had been brought into the room; but she was relieved at seeing the easy nod which the colonel bestowed upon his vanquished foe, and the friendly hand which good Mrs. Crowther held out to Isola, who paled and blushed, and all but wept at meeting with that cordial matron.