So while Mary bore away her darling, undressed him, smoothed all his golden curls, and tucked him tenderly into his little crib; while she knelt beside it, folded his little pink hands devoutly, and made him repeat after her a simple childish prayer, of love and faith, and that God might bless papa and mamma, and give Derval a good night's rest; while, after this, she had to tell him stories of the flowers in the garden, the birds and the little lambs, and especially of the Pixies, those wonderful Devonshire fairies, who, though invisibly small, ride the farmers' horses nearly to death, steal the fruit and pound their own cider in holes and corners; and while she covered his rosy cheeks with the tenderest kisses ere he coaxed himself to sleep, her moody husband lost in his own thoughts, his briar-root pipe grown cold, had been gazing on the sea, and the wide expanse of Barnstaple Bay shining in the last glow of the set sun. The beauty of the Devonshire coast, with all its bluffs and rocks, its wonderful verdure and glorious "apple-bowers now mellowing in the moon," had no charms for the soul of Greville Hampton, whose mind at that time was running on the London life from which he was a hopeless exile now, the life in which he once bore a brilliant part. Well did he know all that was passing, and on the _tapis_ at that identical season! That the club at Sandown was flourishing as it never flourished before; that Prince's was in all its glory; that the meetings of the Coaching Clubs and four-in-hands had all been arranged, without his team of roans being expected at the Serpentine; that Richmond, Hurlingham, and the Orleans Club were all extant, though they knew not him, and that even his name was recalled at none of them now. Already had the attractions of Epsom and Ascot begun, combining those of hospitable country-house life with wild excitement of the race-course and betting-ring; and he knew that the sons and daughters of pleasure were striving to crush as much brilliant amusement as was possible into the interval between flowery Whitsuntide and the epoch of Goodwood in its glory, and the yacht regattas at Cowes. His mind, we say, was full of all these things--fierce, high, bitter, and regretful thoughts all mingling together--when Mary, full only of the sleeping face of her child, gentle and unrepining, content and hopeful, crept hack to resume her knitting by his side. Her knitting! How the proud man winced as he saw her white hands so humbly employed. "Derval is asleep?" said he. "Yes; and the dear pet lamb, how sweetly he does sleep!" replied Mary, her soft voice almost tremulous with the pleasure of her maternal love; "I remained watching him for a time, and wondering--wondering in my heart--" "What, Mary?" "What awaited him in the unseen future," she replied, as she fixed her eyes, not upon the face of her husband, but on the far horizon of the sea, yet tinted with ruddy gold by the sun that had set.