"Get this lady a brandy and soda—a stiff one, please. Drink it off at once; that’s right." He took her hand in his and closed her fingers over the key and little instrument. "Put that in your pocket. If I were you I should set about that task to-night, Mrs. Farquharson—it is always better to get a job over. It’s quite a little thing really, you know. And in twenty-four hours you will feel a new woman, free from all your worries and difficulties and obligations. You will have done good to a friend who is sincerely fond of you, and, if you are wise, no harm can possibly come either to you or to anybody you care about through your action. You promise, then? That’s right. Good-bye." He walked bare-headed out to the vestibule and watched the car out of sight, speeding back on its way home to Chester Street. *CHAPTER VI* "For you, for me, the cup of trembling...." It seemed to Farquharson in the days that followed Dora’s announcement, that he lived and moved in a dream. As a rule, the realization of fatherhood only dawns upon a man when his child is in his arms. But to him, already, the dream-child was a tender promise. It swept away so many of the supernatural barriers between him and Dora. She had failed him in every office of friend and companion and wife, but she might yet redeem the past by giving him this dear possession, the child whose future he could mould in his own lines, to whom he could give the fruits of his own toil and his ambition. Beadon, Hare, Creagh and Lady Ennly alike noticed the change in his manner to his wife. Her shortcomings and failings no longer seemed to disturb him; where he had been merely patient before he was now gentle and tender. He studied her comfort even in the merest trifles; he toiled the more hopefully at his work in the knowledge that sure comfort and help would dawn presently. To a man of a certain temperament, the presence of his living child may even atone for the otherwise irreparable loss of his dearest hope. Farquharson wanted to give his son all that he himself had been robbed of in childhood. He could look back on his past life now with the detachment of a mere spectator, for every rough place that he had trod, he meant to make a happy playground for the boy. That is after all a fitting end of toil and labour, that a man should forge the sword which his heir’s hand is to wield, that he should deny and discipline himself that his son may be the better braced for conflict with the foes within. So Dora’s reproaches left him unmoved, only a little pitiful, perhaps, that she could not see things as he did, that to her the coming joy was no joy at all, only annoyance and restraint. Not a day passed but she made some further claim upon his purse; never economical, she became absolutely reckless in her expenditure, and when he attempted to restrain her he was met by a flood of tears and angry protestations.