Besides, a cynic contemporary with Sir Gilbert Clare may have questioned the spirit in which the Hospitaller had watched the cliffs of Devon fade out in the sunset. Who knows? There were stonechats and whinchats then as now. On the morning after the requiem Dorothy was confronted with the possibility of an event that in its significance, should it come to fruition, would obliterate all that had happened in the past and would provide her in the future with a task so tremendous that she almost fell on her knees then and there to pray for strength and wisdom to sustain it. This was the possibility that she was going to have a child. Such a prospect changed every plan for the future that she had been making and destroyed her freedom in the very moment it had been given back to her by the death of her husband. Her intention of proving to Harry Tufton that she could again be a favorite of the public must now be relinquished; her ambition to withdraw haughtily from the protection of Lord Chatfield must presumably be abandoned. Yet need they? She should not be too impulsive. Who now except herself had the right to say a word about her child's future? Who else could claim to be the guardian of its destiny? If she was right about her condition, she should rejoice that Tony was dead. If he had been alive and in that mood he was in before the outbreak of war solved his future so rapidly and so completely, this wonderful prospect would only have led to recriminations, even to open hatred. It would have been he who had robbed their child of its inheritance, and she could never have refrained from taunting him with his egotism. Nor was it likely that he would have been reformed by the prospect of being a father; he had not shown much inclination that way in the early years of their marriage; and even if for a while he had changed his habits, he would gradually have relapsed, and, moreover, with his genial and indulgent character he would have held out not merely a bad, but also an attractive, example, which would doubtless have been eagerly and assiduously imitated by any child of his. Yes, but now the future lay in her hands ... and meanwhile she must not be too sure that she was going to have a child at all, nor, even if it were established that she was, must she make too many plans in advance, because everything would be ruled by whether it was a boy or a girl. If it should be a girl, she might go back to the stage next year; she would only be thirty-one next March. It was odd how much younger thirty-one seemed than thirty. But if it should be a boy ... well, even if it should be a boy, why should she not go back to the stage and by her own exertions keep him, educate him, prepare him to be what he must be--landless, houseless, moneyless, but still the sixth Earl of Clarehaven? Stoic, indeed, should be his training, and his nobility should be won as well as conferred.