"Debil!" he shouted in his passion, and he shook his fists at Haggard in impotent rage. "Take him away, Fanchette," said Haggard with a laugh. The _bonne_ smiled and caught the infuriated child up in her arms. "_Ah ma foi, monsieur_," she exclaimed, "_après tout, c'est naturel, il aime le spectacle, le beau bébé_." "Well, he's not to have the spectacle, mind that, Fanchette." The child and the one kitten undoomed to a watery grave were carried off by the _bonne_. "That chap's a devil of a temper, Georgie," said the husband with a laugh. "Case in point, my dear," he continued; "we keep one kitten and drown the rest, and there doesn't seem anything very horrible about it after all; and that's what we of the upper classes, Georgie, have morally to do with our own offspring. It's on exactly that same principle that little Lucius will have to get our money and our land, while _that_ poor little chap and his brothers and sisters, if he should have the misfortune to have any, will have to rub along as best they can. You and I, Georgie, will have morally to perform the functions of the stony-hearted gardener." Haggard kissed his wife, then he ran his hand meditatively over the infant's soft scalp; he began to whistle a tune, and left the room. It may be very unnatural, it may be very inartistic, but this being merely a veracious chronicle, it has to be told that Georgie loved the little Lucius quite as much and with exactly the same affection that she felt for the infant she fondled on her lap. Totally inexplicable, you will say; but so it was. Georgie had never grudged to the little Lucius his share of her own and her husband's affection. She and her husband were young people; they might have a large family growing up round them, but they were wealthy, and they had large expectations, so that a child more or less to people in their position in life did not very much matter. But to give a little stranger a full share in the domestic pie is one thing, and to rob one's own children for the sake of the same little stranger is another. The more Georgie thought the matter over the more monstrous and impossible seemed her position. She would make an appeal to her cousin's mercy, to her cousin's sense of justice. But she felt morally certain that Lucy would never consent to an _éclaircissement_, or to the making a clean breast of the whole long-buried scandal to her cousin's husband. Gradually the infant on her lap, her husband's legitimate heir, dozed gently off; Mrs. Haggard placed him in his cot and proceeded to darken the room; as she did so the door opened and her cousin's smiling face appeared. "I want to talk to you, Lucy; I want to talk to you about baby," said Georgie with gravity. "Nothing the matter with him, dear, I hope, is there?"