"I--I don't remember," said Buck; but once more, if a lady said it was so, so it was. Again the grave look came into his eyes, and again she understood. "I can have it looked after better than you can," she said. "And--please--you will?" he dared to supplicate. She nodded. Still he hesitated. "If it's a little boy, miss--I might be opening a Sparring Academy--strictly for the gentry--I wouldn't charge him nothing----" And after a little further discussion the shameful piece of collusion came to an end. They were divorced in the March of 1870. On the 15th of April the child was born--a girl. Fifteen months later the Honourable Emily married Captain Cecil Chaffinger, of the White Hussars. II The child never got on well with her mother. Mrs. Chaffinger never forgave her her paternity. The gallant Captain, on the other hand, treated her as he would have treated his own child--that is to say, he bought her extravagant toys if the proximity of a toyshop put it into his head to do so, pinched her arms and cheeks and neck jocularly whenever he found her head at the level of his waistcoat, and then departed, as likely as not to pinch maturer arms and necks, not Mrs. Chaffinger's, elsewhere. He took his wife's former _mésalliance_ with perfect serenity. She had paid his debts and enabled him to spend a day or two in his father's house when he cared to do so, and the Captain, who was a gentleman and not very much else to boast of, held faithfully to his part of the bargain. He even dropped in once or twice at Buck Causton's new _Salle d'Armes_ in Bruton Street. The child was called by his name--Louise Chaffinger; he called her Mops, because of her quantities of thick brown hair. The Honourable Emily became querulous and an invalid; took to falling into dozes no matter who was present, and waking up again with alarming cries; and she busied herself with charitable works performed in an uncharitable temper.