“I suppose,” he pursued, the thought forming suddenly from nowhere, “that you are going to adopt her?” Mathilda looked up sharply. She pretended to detect in his words more of approval than of inquiry and replied as though he had offered a suggestion. “You’re not serious, Sterling?” Blaydon’s intuition surprised him. He had struck fire, where hardly more than a joke had been intended. “Why not?” he asked, with a good-natured shrug. “It seems cruel, somehow,” she replied. Her tone was as detached as though she had said, “it seems too green,” of a dress-cloth. “I can’t quite see that. Mothers are proverbially unselfish--” “She would have to be brought up with your boys, Sterling. Have you thought of that?” He had not thought of that and there was more to Mathilda’s remark than banter. As if to influence his reply, the youngest boy, Robert, three and a half, scampered past them and climbed upon a favourite seat, between two clipped boxwood trees, chattering to himself and grinning across at his father as if to say, “I dare you to come and get me!” But Blaydon ignored him for the moment. He did not know that Mathilda’s mind had gone all over this matter of adoption, and that the question she had just put to him, in spite of its unconcerned air, was really a crucial one with her. Upon his feeling about it would depend a great deal, yet this did not imply that she felt herself bound to accept his decisions. There were scores of things that she might do if the whim possessed her, in spite of him. Blaydon was aware of this, and though he did not know how much she had thought about the child, he was inclined toward caution. She was a good sister--a better mother, he honestly believed, for his children than their own.... When he answered it was with a laugh that had the effect upon Mathilda of some one opening a door she wanted to go through. “Well, I don’t know,” he went on, slowly. “I suppose that Ellen is a fixture anyhow, and young cubs are more likely to fall in love with a really beautiful Cinderella than just a handsome cousin. That is if the child is beautiful. How on earth can you tell anything about them at that age?” “You can tell the day after they are born,” snapped back Mrs. Seymour. “I would venture to sit down and write the lives of your two sons to-day, and I shouldn’t be far from the truth, barring death and accidents.” “So?” he asked, “and have I anything to fear?” “Oh, no, they’ll come back to the fold, even as you did!” Her look was one of benevolent sarcasm and he grinned. There were many things worse to remember than the pretty women of his younger days. But he had come back to the fold ... that was true, and it was not so pleasant after all. Change would be kind. He reached over and touched the blond head of his boy, who was sitting on the tiles now at his feet.