The child can just run alone now, and lisp his mother's name in that sweet baby language which is earth's exquisite music to a mother's ears. He is a lovely little fellow, with big starry eyes, and soft gold hair and winning coaxing ways, which did as they would with all womankind, who had anything to do with him. Lauraine kneels there for a moment under the great oak trees, and, holds him clasped to her heart. "We will take him home, nurse," she says, looking up at the stately personage who is his guardian, and who adores him with all her soul. "You can't carry him, my lady, and it is too far for him to walk," she says. "Oh yes. Lady Etwynde and I will carry him between us," answers Lauraine. "Darling--how strong and big he gets! There, take mother's hand. Isn't he delighted, Lady Etwynde, to come with us?" "He seems so," smiles her friend. "Farewell to philosophy now, Lauraine. King Baby puts everything else into the background." "It is wonderful, is it not?" says Lauraine, with something of the old bright smile. "I wonder how I could ever have lived without him. He seems to hold all my heart in these two wee hands of his." "I have often wondered," says Lady Etwynde, dreamily, "it seems an odd thing to say, perhaps, but I have often wondered at women who are mothers 'going wrong' as people express it. I could understand a wife, bad as it is; but to forsake your children your own flesh and blood for the sake of a man's love--well it must be a sort of delirious frenzy, I suppose. And do you know it is not always flighty women--careless women--who astonish us by a _daux pas_. It is sometimes the quietest and most unlikely." "Yes," answers Lauraine very quietly; "these cases are so totally different to the lookers-on. They only see the result, not what leads up to it." "It is difficult to know what to think," says Lady Etwynde. "I have known people marry for love, for money, for rank, for convenience, for obedience's sake, for duty's sake, and yet I don't know of one single _really_ happy marriage. The lovers have got sick of each other in a year, the moneyed pair are miserable, the other indifferent, unfaithful, erratic, as the case may be. Is it any wonder, Lauraine, that I gave the business a wide berth?" "You are fortunate to be able to please yourself," says Lauraine; "it is not every woman who can do that." "No, I suppose not," says her friend. "And then it's a case of 'what can't be cured, must be endured.' Is baby too heavy for you? Let me carry him now!" "I wonder what makes him shiver so?" says Lauraine, anxiously. "I don't think nurse ought to have brought him out such a cold afternoon." "And we haven't a shawl or wrap of any description," says Lady Etwynde. "Yes he does look cold. There, I'll turn his face away from the wind. We shall soon be home. Why, how troubled you look, my dear. When you have a nursery full of little plagues, you won't fidget about one so much."