'I am not tired now,' she said. 'And, Bertie, Bertie, there is one thing yet. Before very many months I shall be the mother of your child.' And the long pent-up tempest of her love for him broke, overwhelming and flooding her. Her arms were pressed round his neck, and from his shoulder she raised her face to his. 'Your child,' she whispered again. CHAPTER XVIII On the second morning after this Bilton was seated at breakfast, with his confidential secretary by him, who was engaged in opening and reading his letters to him, and taking shorthand notes of his replies. Bilton himself glanced at the envelopes and directions first, and reserved for his own opening anything that carried a superscription of privacy, or was in the hand of anyone with whom he was on terms of intimacy. There were never many of these; the bulk of his daily correspondence was of a purely business character, which was, on the whole, infinitely more to his mind than the effusions of friends. Of late his mail-bag had put on weight enormously, the English affairs of Mr. Palmer and the swelling trade of his own personal enterprises having almost doubled it in the last few months; but this increase was wholly welcome to him, since every letter received and answered meant business. On this particular morning there was nothing, as far as he could see, designed for his private eye, and the quiet, smooth-voiced young American who sat by him had the field to himself. Some letters required but a monosyllabic reply from his master, which he jotted down in a corner of the page; others were longer, and demanded some half-page of cabalistic notes; others, again, were set aside to be dealt with by Bilton himself. There were to-day several of them dealing with the subject of a threatened strike at the railway works which were in process of establishment at the junction where the Cardiff line, now in process of construction, would join the existing Liverpool and Southampton. The business was an annoying one; bricklayers employed on repairs on a tunnel there were already out, and now a demand came from platelayers on the same section. Another letter was from the engineer in charge of that section of the line. The entrance to the tunnel, on the work of which the bricklayers had been employed, was, of course, perfectly safe with its wooden casing and strutting, but in case of heavy or continuous rain the ground might get soft, and the struts sink in the ground, thus rendering the passage unsafe for trains. He suggested that labour should be brought from elsewhere at once, unless the men could be induced to go back to work.