But on this momentary collapse ensued renewed strength. It might be, she thought, she could appeal to the law. She knew that her husband’s was the superior claim to the child, but in view of his tender years, his delicate health in certain respects, might not a court grant his custody to his mother? At all events his restoration to her care was henceforward her one object, and if she allowed herself to be forced out of the country, to serve this unknown, unimagined whim of her cruel husband’s, she might never see the child again. A knock at the door startled her nerves like a clap of thunder. A maid had come to say that dinner had been served--indeed the butler had announced it an hour ago--and should it still wait? “Have it taken down,” Paula said with stiff lips. “Mr. Floyd-Rosney will not dine at home.” For Paula had heard the street door bang as she fled up the stairs, and she knew that he was not in the house. The girl gazed at her with a sharp point of curiosity in her little black eyes as she obsequiously withdrew. Despite the humility of the manner of her domestics Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had not the ascendency in her household due a chatelaine so magnificently placed. It was his wealth--she was an appendage. It was his will that ruled, not hers. As the servants loved to remark to each other, “She has got no more say-so here than me,” and the insecurity of her authority and the veneer of her position affected unfavorably the estimation in which she was held. The girl perceived readily enough that a clash had supervened between the couple and sagely opined that the master would have the best of it. Below stairs they ascribed to it the strange removal of the child at this hour of the night and the change in their employer’s plans for the evening. Their unrestrained voices came up through doors carelessly left ajar, along with the clatter of the dishes of the superfluous dinner, and Paula, with some unoccupied faculty, albeit all seemed burdened to the point of breaking with her heavy thoughts, realized that this breach of domestic etiquette could never have chanced had the master of the house been within its walls.