barley-water drinking modern young men! Our Duchess is a fortunate creature, I assure you, in more ways than one! So we need not trouble about that or make unto ourselves a picture of a young woman and an elderly man! They are like a pair of love birds--and they will probably have that sturdy heir at once that I have always longed for, and then I can rest in peace. And when Gerard read this at Moscow, where he happened to be, he was glad, and yet sad. The wedded lovers wandered for several months in France and Italy, returning to England only in the new year, and all this interesting foreign travel expanded still further Katherine's mental gifts. Then after some triumphant weeks in London, there were long months of joy at Valfreyne, awaiting the coming of the son and heir. And now in the early days of September, 1914, they were all again assembled there with Lady Garribardine for the christening--a great and important event! But war and strain and sorrow lay with that black shadow over England, fallen with a suddenness which no one could realise as yet. Rumours of reverses had come--miscalculation of somebody's plans. And anxiety was tense. Katherine was resting on the sofa in her boudoir, which looked out south over the exquisite gardens in the state suite at Valfreyne--the suite of her who should be reigning Duchess, in which she had wandered with the Duke on that Monday in Whitsuntide, when they had said their futile farewell! And now it was her own! And in an hour, they would go into the chapel and the splendid chubby baby heir would receive his many names. Katherine felt very well and in herself supremely happy, in spite of the clouds over England. How good providence had been to her! How grateful her spirit felt! She lay there in a peaceful dream, her half closed eyes taking in the wonderful beauty of the room, with its late seventeenth century magnificence and yet subtle touches of home. Then the door opened, and the Duke came in with letters for her from the second post, and the opened _Times_ he had been reading in his hand--He put them down upon a table near, and took a low chair close to his lady's side, and she moved a little from the sofa so that she lay half in his arms. "My worshipped one!" he murmured fondly, kissing her hair, and smoothing it with infinite tenderness. "Oh! Mordryn, I am so happy--are not you? What a sublime day for us, dear Love! Just to think that we have that darling little son, the very essence of us both! Tell me that he and I mean everything to you. Tell me that I have given you all you want?" He reassured her with passionate insistence, as though he could not say enough, and then he asked her again and again if she loved him. It was as if he must have confirmation of her passion for him, and her consent.