He was a tall man with a certain rather formal air of stateliness about him, a suggestion of the _grand seigneur_, and the unwontedly impulsive movement was significant of the strain under which he was labouring.
Catherine was standing on the threshold of the room with something in her arms--something almost indistinguishable amid the downy, fleecy froth of whiteness amid which it lay.
Hugh was conscious of a new and strange sensation deep down inside himself.

He felt rather as though all the blood in his body had rushed to one place--somewhere in the middle of it--and were pounding there against his ribs.
He tried to speak, failed, then instinctively stretched out his arms for the tiny, orris-scented bundle which Catherine carried.
The next thing of which he was conscious was Catherine's voice as she placed his child in his arms--very quiet, yet rasping across the tender silence of the room like a file.
"Here, Hugh, is the living seal which God Himself has set upon the sin of your marriage." Hugh's eyes, bent upon the pink, crumpled features of the scrap of humanity nestled amid the bunchy whiteness in his arms, sought his sister's face.

It was a thin, hard face, sharply cut like carved ivory; the eyes a light, cold blue, ablaze with hostility; the pale obstinate lips, usually folded so impassively one above the other, working spasmodically.
For a moment brother and sister stared at each other in silence.

Then, all at once, Catherine's rigidly enforced composure snapped.
"A girl child, Hugh!" she jeered violently.

"A _girl_--when you prayed for a boy!" "A girl ?" Hugh stared stupidly at the babe in his arms.
"Ay, a girl!" taunted Catherine, her voice cracking with rising hysteria.