"Now," she said, when she had reached the nursery, "we will have a look at the creature--oh! the little gutter-born creature!--that is to be my own all the rest of my life." The ayah threw back the wraps, and disclosed a lusty boy, about a year or fifteen months old. The lady sat down by the table, and dropped her hands in her lap. "Oh," she cried, "I _could_ not tell him! It broke my heart to watch the boy on his deathbed: it would kill him--it would kill him--the child of his old age, his only child! To save my husband I would do worse things than this--far worse things--far worse things." Among the child's clothes, which were clean and well kept, there was a paper. The lady snatched it up. There was writing on it. "His name"--the writing was plain and clear, not that of a wholly uneducated woman--"is Humphrey. His surname does not matter. It begins with 'W.'" "Why," cried the lady, "Humphrey! Humphrey! My boy's own name! And his surname begins with 'W'--my boy's initial! If it should be my own boy!--oh! ayah, my own boy come back again!" The ayah shook her head sadly. But she changed the child's clothes for those of the dead child; and she folded up his own things, and laid them in a drawer. "The doctor has not deceived me," said the lady. "Fair hair, blue eyes; eyes and hair the colour of my boy." The tears came into her eyes. "He's a beautiful boy," said the nurse; "not a spot nor a blemish, and his limbs round and straight and strong. See how he kicks. And look--look! why, if he hasn't got the chin--the sahib's chin!" It was not much: a dimple, a hollow between the lower lip and the end of the chin. "Strange! So he has. Do you think, nurse, the sahib, his father, will think that the child looks his age? He is to be a year and a quarter, you know." The ayah laughed. "Men know nothing," she said. In a day or two the supposed parent returned home. He was a man advanced in years, between sixty and seventy. He was tall and spare of figure. His features were strongly marked, the features of a man who administers and commands. His face was full of authority; his eyes were as keen as a hawk's. He stepped up the stairs with the spring of five and twenty, and welcomed his wife with the sprightliness of a bridegroom of that elastic age. The man was, in fact, a retired Indian. He had spent forty years or so in administrating provinces: he was a king retired from business, a sovereign abdicated, on whose face a long reign had left the stamp of kingcraft. It was natural that in the evening of his life this man should marry a young and beautiful girl; it was also quite natural that this girl should entertain, for a husband old enough to be her grandfather, an affection and respect which dominated her. He held out both arms; he embraced his wife with the ardour of a young lover; he turned her face to the light. "Lilias!" he murmured, "let me look at you. Why, my dear, you look pale--and worried! Is anything the matter?"