As he held the watch at the length of its chain and stared,
half-comprehending, his hand--the hand of the finest swordsman in the
Indian Army--shook.

Lenore gone: a puling, yelping whelp in her place.... A tall,
severe-looking elderly woman entered the verandah by a distant door
and approached the savage, miserable soldier. Nurse Beaton.

"_Will_ you give your son a name, Sir?" she said, and it was evident
in voice and manner that the question had been asked before and had
received an unsatisfactory, if not unprintable; reply. Every line of
feature and form seemed to express indignant resentment. She had
nursed and foster-mothered the child's mother, and--unlike the
man--had found the baby the chiefest consolation of her cruel grief,
and already loved it not only for its idolized mother's sake, but with
the devotion of a childless child-lover.

"The christening is fixed for to-day, Sir, as I have kept reminding
you, Sir," she added.

She had never liked the Colonel--nor considered him "good enough" for
her tender, dainty darling, "nearly three times her age and no better
than he ought to be".

"Name?" snarled Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne. "Name the little
beast? Call him what you like, and then drown him." The tight-lipped
face of the elderly nurse flushed angrily, but before she could make
the indignant reply that her hurt and scandalized look presaged, the
Colonel added:--