Mr. Ramsay’s thoughts seemed a long way from the Strangway portraits this afternoon, although he had expressed a curiosity as to the lineaments of that luckless race. He was out in the garden—in Lady Cheriton’s rose garden—with Juanita and her son, and was giving further proofs of his adaptability to infantile society. The grandmother was of the party, looking on with profound admiration at that phase of awakening intellect which is described as “taking notice.” It was held now as an established fact that the infant Godfrey James Dalbrook took notice, and that his notice dwelt with especial favour upon Cuthbert Ramsay. “I think it must be because you are so tall and big,” said Juanita lightly. “He feels your power, and he wants to conciliate you.” “Artful little beggar! No, that is much too low a view. There is a magnetic affinity between us—love at first sight. When babies do take a fancy they are thoroughly in earnest about it. Loafing about in the New Cut sometimes, studying human nature from the Saturday night point of view, I have had a poor woman’s baby take a fancy to me—a poor little elfin creature, a year old perhaps, and not half so big as this bloated aristocrat, a sour-smelling baby which would give you _mal au cœur_, Lady Carmichael; and the wretched little waif would hook on to my elephantine finger and cleave to me as if I were its mother. Oh, how sorry I have felt for such a baby—with the pure starry eyes of infancy shining in the flabby withered face that has grown old for want of cold water and fresh air! For such infancy and for stray dogs I have suffered acutest agonies of pity—and yet I have done nothing—only pitied and passed on. That is the worst of us. We can all pity, but we don’t act upon the divine impulse. You may be sure the Levite felt very sorry for the wounded traveller, though he did not see his way to helping him.” This was one of Cuthbert’s tirades, which he was wont to indulge in when he found himself in congenial society; and Juanita’s society was particularly congenial to him. He felt as if no other woman had ever sympathized with him or understood him—and he gave her credit for doing both. Never had he felt so happy in the society of any woman, as he felt in this sunlit garden to-day, among the roses which were just now blooming in a riotous luxuriance, the branching heads of standards top-heavy with great balls of blossom, swaying gently in the summer wind.