from his lawyers, informing him of their receipt of a communication dated
South Wales, December 11th, and signed Owain Wythan; to the effect, that
the birth of a son to the Earl of Fleetwood was registered on the day of
the date, with a copy of the document forwarded.

Livia scornfully stated the tattling world's 'latest.' The captain was
as brief, in ordinary words, whose quick run to the stop could be taken
for a challenge of the eye. It stamped the adversary's frown on
Fleetwood reading. Lady Arpington was more politic; she wrote of
'a healthy boy,' and 'the healthy mother giving him breast,' this being
'the way for the rearing of strong men.' She condescended to the
particulars, that she might touch him.

The earl had not been so reared: his mother was not the healthy mother.
One of his multitudinous, shifty, but ineradicable ambitions was to
exhibit an excellingly vigorous, tireless constitution. He remembered
the needed refreshment of the sea-breezes aboard his yacht during the
week following the sleep-discarded nights at Scrope's and the green
tables. For a week he hung to the smell of brine, in rapturous amity
with Feltre, until they yellowed, differed, wrangled, hated.

A powerful leaven was put into him by the tidings out of Wales. Gower,
good fellow, had gone down to see the young mother three weeks after the
birth of her child. She was already renewing her bloom. She had
produced the boy in the world's early manner, lightly, without any of the
tragic modern hovering over death to give the life. Gower compared it to
a 'flush of the vernal orchard after a day's drink of sunlight.' That
was well: that was how it should be. One loathes the idea of tortured
women.