“Silence!” echoed Lady Lansmere; and her burning hand rested in Audley’s, and Audley’s hand was as ice. In another hour Egerton had left the house, and before noon he was with Harley. It is necessary now to explain the absence of all the Avenel family, except the poor stricken father. Nora had died in giving birth to a child—died delirious. In her delirium she had spoken of shame—of disgrace; there was no holy nuptial ring on her finger! Through all her grief, the first thought of Mrs Avenel was to save the good name of her lost daughter—the unblemished honour of all the living Avenels. No matron, long descended from knights or kings, had keener pride in name and character than the poor, punctilious Calvinistic trader’s wife. “Sorrow later, honour now!” With hard dry eyes she mused and mused, and made out her plan. Jane Fairfield should take away the infant at once, before the day dawned, and nurse it with her own. Mark should go with her, for Mrs Avenel dreaded the indiscretion of his wild grief. She would go with them herself part of the way, in order to command or reason them into guarded silence. But they could not go back to Hazeldean with another infant; Jane must go where none knew her; the two infants might pass as twins. And Mrs Avenel, though naturally a humane, kindly woman, and with a mother’s heart to infants, looked with almost a glad sternness at Jane’s puny babe, and thought to herself, “All difficulty will be over if there be only _one_! Nora’s child could thus pass throughout life for Jane’s!”