knew the real facts of the case except Mary and the servants. Mary was safe as Lady Eskside herself, and as careful of the honour of the family; and as for the servants, with their well-known love of the marvellous, how could any one pin his faith on them? Thus circumstances arranged themselves for little Val a hundred times better than the most sanguine imagination could have believed. But the story lingered in the lower levels of society, where nobody was deceived. Merran Miller herself, though she had been Richard’s nurse, and felt herself a partisan of the family, paused to give an elaborate description of the child and his finery to her friends, when, throwing her apron over her cap, she rushed out to proclaim her Willie’s good fortune to all the world: “I wish I was at the bottom o’t,” cried Merran; “it’s an awfu’ queer story. I’m real glad now that it came into my head to give the weans a piece, and that I was civil to the woman. But to see yon bairn decked up like a cheeny image! and him gaun greeting with a beggar-wife nae later than Wednesday at e’en----!” CHAPTER VII. “Richard, there is one disagreeable subject which, as you said nothing about it, I have avoided as long as possible; but I must speak now, before you go.” Lady Eskside had led her son out upon the terrace the evening before he was to leave. She was dressed for dinner in her black satin gown, with a lace cap and stomacher, which even his fastidious eye approved. She had come to the age when little change of costume is possible. Sometimes she wore velvet instead of satin, but that was about all the variety she made, and her lace was her only vanity. She had a crimson Indian scarf thrown over her head and shoulders. Her erect old figure was still as trim, and her step as springy, as any girl’s. She was the picture of an old lady, everybody allowed;--and it was true she was old--yet full of an unquenchable youth. She had taken her son by the arm in the interval before dinner, and led him out into the open air to speak to him. Perhaps it was an inopportune moment; but it was a subject for which she felt a few minutes were enough, as it could not but be painful to both. “Well, mother,” he said, with a tone of resignation. He was going next day, which gave him strength to bear this ordeal, whatever its cause might be. “I have said nothing to you--indeed, indeed, I have wished to say nothing--about---- Richard, my dear boy, listen to me with patience, I will not keep you long---- about--Val’s mother--your wife.” “What about her?” said Richard, with harsh brevity. He made a movement almost as if to throw off his mother’s arm. “My dear, you must not think this subject is less disagreeable to me than to you. Nothing has been said about her for a long time----” “And why should anything be said about her?” said Richard. “In such a hopeless business, what is the advantage of discussion? She has chosen her path in life, which is not the same as mine.”