Instead of replying, she began, as by a suddenly confirmed resolve, to remove the coverings at the other end of the bundle, and presently disclosed the baby's feet. The baronet gazed wondering. To what might not assurance be about to subject him? She took one of the little feet in a hard but gentle hand, and spreading out “the pink, five-beaded baby-toes,” displayed what even the inexperience of the baronet could not but recognize as remarkable: between every pair of toes was stretched a thin delicate membrane. She laid the foot down, took up the other, and showed the same peculiarity. The child was web-footed, as distinctly as any properly constituted duckling! Then she lifted, one after the other, the tiny hands, beautiful to any eye that understood, and showed between the middle and third finger of each, the same sort of membrane rising half-way to the points of them. “I see!” said the baronet, with a laugh that was not nice, having in it no merriment, “the creature is a monster!--Well, if you think I am to blame, I can only protest you are mistaken. _I_ am not web-footed! The duckness must come from the other side.” “I hope you will remember, sir Wilton!” “Remember? What do you mean? Take the monster away.” The woman rearranged the coverings of the little crooked legs. “Won't you look at your lady before they put her in her coffin?” she said when she had done. “What good would that do her? She's past caring!--No, I won't: why should I? Such sights are not pleasant.” “The coffin's a lonely chamber, sir Wilton; lonely to lie all day and all night in!” “No lonelier for one than for another!” he replied, with an involuntary recoil from his own words. For the one thing a man must believe--yet hardly believes--is, that he shall one day die. “She'll be better without me, anyhow!” “You are heartless, sir Wilton!” “Mind your own business. If I choose to be heartless, I may have my reasons. Take the child away.” Still she did not move. The baby, young as he was, had thrown the blanket from his face, and the father's eyes were fixed on it: while he gazed the nurse would not stir. He seemed fascinated by its ugliness. Without absolute deformity, the child was indeed as unsightly as infant well could be. “My God!” he said again--for he had a trick of crying out as if he had a God--“the little brute hates me! Take it away, woman. Take it away before I strangle it! I can't answer for myself if it keeps on looking at me!” With a glance whose mingled anger and scorn the father did not see, the nurse turned and went. He kept staring after her till the door shut, then fell back into his chair, exclaiming once more, “My God!”--What or whom he meant by the word, it were hard to say.