The young mother’s reason had never fully returned to her since that poignant grapple, four nights ago, with the great and astonishing secret. She was sound, unhurt from the contest; but her faculties slept in a sort of exhausted abeyance. She was very white and still--incurious--not greatly troubled: so far things were fortunate. And here was the enwrapping fog for a final cloak, or pall. As Mark stepped softly from the room, closing the door, a rather livid-faced, stale-smelling young man in a black frock coat and black peg-top trousers, revealing frowzy white socks beneath, accosted him whisperingly. “Well, sir; all in train?” Mark nodded, smiling. “All in train, Blague. It’s really a providence, and your conscience may sleep sound to-night--as sound as she’s sleeping in there. Don’t wake her--don’t _let_ her wake, rather--to a sense of her loss, you comprehend, till I return.” “Quite so. The _vis inertiæ_--the vegetation of a sensitive plant, no more; we will see to it. The business shall not miscarry through us, sir, depend upon it.” “That’s right. You sha’n’t lose by this little divagation in our plans, rest sure of that.” He put his finger to his lips, and tiptoed down to the hall, where stood a pallid-faced young woman in a shawl and poke bonnet, gently rocking a bundle in her arms. She looked at the husband gravely, questioningly; but she was silent. The poor thing, in fact, was helpless under his dominion. Those dark eyes and ambrosial whiskers, with the cleft chin between, had, in a few days, brimmed the measure of her romance. Engaged for nurse to Mrs Dalston, she was fallen a slave to the lamp of a brighter magician than duty. The two entered a “growler” of the ancient dimensions, and the fog lapped them up. Jogging its apathetic course through the smoke, as it seemed, of a vast glimmering conflagration, the squalid vehicle gained at length the Clapham Road, and drew near its destination. Then the pale little nurse spoke for the first time. “Are we nearly there?” “Nearly there, my child.” “Your child!” She raised the little bundle in her arms to her breast. The pressure seemed to convey abroad from it a waft of that warm, milky nidor inseparable from newly born infants. Mr Dalston’s white teeth glimmered through the fog. “For the dozenth time,” he said softly, “I must assure you, little Ellen, that grave issues hang upon the preservation of the tiny life in your arms. That life is threatened only so long as I fail to convince a certain person of its actuality. You mustn’t ask me how or why. It embraces matters above your comprehension.” “I can’t help it--I’m frightened,” was all she could find voice to whisper. He put his arm confidently about her. She shivered, but let herself settle into it. “Hush!” he said. “What is there to be frightened about? I shall do nothing but take it in, show it, and return with it to you.”