‘Exactly so. You were in Italy at the time, or I should have liked to have talked it over. My lady, as you know, did me the favour to present me with a son and heir. I am not a judge of babies myself, nor am I particularly partial to them, but it was a creditable baby, so far as I can judge. I imagine its lungs were sound by the way in which it squealed. It had the regulation number of limbs, the family proboscis, and apparently the parental eyes. The women all voted it a sweet little innocent, and the image of its father.’ ‘That’s a matter of course,’ said the friend. ‘Well, one day the child was missing.’ ‘I remember hearing of it. It was said your lady was in delicate health at the time, and the shock caused her death.’ ‘I believe it had something to do with it; but the fact was with all her admirable qualities she had peculiar notions, and that led to little unpleasantnesses between us at times, and she worried herself about trifles in a way I am sure that was not good for her, and I must own that when the child was missing, naturally, she was very much cut up.’ ‘And the father?’ said the friend. ‘I took it more calmly, I own. You can’t expect a man of the world, like myself, to have been broken-hearted about the loss of a little bit of flesh like that. Had it lived to become a young man, and to have plagued his poor father as I plagued mine, or as most young fellows do, I should have been prostrated with grief, I dare say. As it was, I bore the loss with the heroism of a martyr, and the resignation of a saint.’ ‘You need not tell me that; I can quite believe it,’ remarked his friend with a smile. ‘Well, as I have said, her ladyship worried herself a good deal unnecessarily. I never can understand why women have such particular ideas. I suppose they learn them from the parson. Now, there was Lady ---’ (naming the wife of a volatile premier forgotten now, but much beloved by the British public for his spirited foreign policy and his low Church bishops). ‘I had the honour of dining with her ladyship at the time there was a little scandal afloat respecting his lordship’s proceedings with a governess who had made her appearance in the family of one of his relatives. The thing was in the papers, and it was nonsense pretending to ignore it. Somehow or other it was incidentally alluded to. ‘“Ah,” said her ladyship, turning to me with one of her most bewitching smiles, “that is so like my dear old man.”