Behind the door was the obscene thing, the alarming presence, and terror would come over her as at death, or the birth of a child.

Better, perhaps, burst in and face it than sit in the antechamber listening to the little creak, the sudden stir, for her heart was swollen, and pain threaded it.

My son, my son--such would be her cry, uttered to hide her vision of him stretched with Florinda, inexcusable, irrational, in a woman with three children living at Scarborough.

And the fault lay with Florinda.

Indeed, when the door opened and the couple came out, Mrs.Flanders would have flounced upon her--only it was Jacob who came first, in his dressing-gown, amiable, authoritative, beautifully healthy, like a baby after an airing, with an eye clear as running water.