“Mary!” cried the old lord, taking her hand, “Mary! This is that wretched woman’s doing that has frightened her. Mary, my love, it is your own child; a beautiful child. Our son, the boy I wanted, Mary.” Mary snatched her hand from his. She shrank away from him to the other edge of the bed. “No, not a boy--no, no, no!--no heir!--there is an heir,” she cried, clutching at the woman who stood on the other side, as if escaping from a danger. “He doesn’t know--he doesn’t know,” she cried, flinging herself upon the nurse. “It will grow up an idiot and kill me. Do you hear? Do you hear? Say it’s not so--oh, say it’s not so!” “No, no, my poor dear lady, no, no! It’s as you wish, it’ll be all you wish,” said the nurse holding the patient in her arms. And Mary clung to the woman holding her fast, whispering in her ear. Lord Frogmore stood with piteous eyes and saw his wife shrinking from him, talking to the woman, who bent over her, with the dreadful whisper of insanity, which meant nothing. Was this what it had come to--all the pride and triumph and joy? The old lord stood with his limbs trembling under him, his old heart sore with disappointment and cold with terror. His mild Mary! What had changed her in a moment in the illusion of happiness to this frenzied sufferer? When he saw that she kept hiding her head in the nurse’s breast, clinging to her, he withdrew sorrowful and subdued to where Agnes sat by the fire with the little bundle of flannel on her lap. She was crying quietly under her breath, and looked up at him as he came towards her with sympathetic trouble. “They say,” she whispered, “that it’s often so just at first when they want sleep. Oh, don’t lose heart!” “It’s that accursed woman,” he said, under his breath. “Oh I hope not--I hope it’s only--she will be better when she has slept. Look at him, poor little darling,” said Agnes unfolding the shawls. Lord Frogmore cast a troubled glance at the poor little heir who seemed about to cost him so dear. He had no heart to look at the child. He crept out of the room afterwards feeling all his years and his unfitness, a man near seventy, for the cares and responsibilities of a father. A father for the first time in his seventieth year. And Mary, Mary! So soon was triumph changed to terror and woe.