第19章 CHAPTER II(3)

"Yes," said Mrs. Barker, "and I hope your friend Stacy remembered that but for ME, when you found out that you were not rich, you'd have given up the claim, but that I really deceived my own father to make you keep it. I've often worried over that, George," she said pensively, turning a diamond bracelet around her pretty wrist, "although I never said anything about it."

"But, Kitty darling," said Barker, grasping his wife's hand, "I gave my note for it; you know you said that was bargain enough, and I had better wait until the note was due, and until I found I couldn't pay, before I gave up the claim. It was very clever of you, and the boys all said so, too. But you never deceived your father, dear," he said, looking at her gravely, "for I should have told him everything."

"Of course, if you look at it in that way," said his wife languidly, "it's nothing; only I think it ought to be remembered when people go about saying papa ruined you with his hotel schemes."

"Who dares say that?" said Barker indignantly.

"Well, if they don't SAY it they look it," said Mrs. Barker, with a toss of her pretty head, "and I believe that's at the bottom of Stacy's refusal."

"But he never said a word, Kitty," said Barker, flushing.

"There, don't excite yourself, George," said Mrs. Barker resignedly, "but go for the baby. I know you're dying to go, and I suppose it's time Norah brought it upstairs."

At any other time Barker would have lingered with explanations, but just then a deeper sense than usual of some misunderstanding made him anxious to shorten this domestic colloquy. He rose, pressed his wife's hand, and went out. But yet he was not entirely satisfied with himself for leaving her. "I suppose it isn't right my going off as soon as I come in," he murmured reproachfully to himself, "but I think she wants the baby back as much as I; only, womanlike, she didn't care to let me know it."

He reached the lower hall, which he knew was a favorite promenade for the nurses who were gathered at the farther end, where a large window looked upon Montgomery Street. But Norah, the Irish nurse, was not among them; he passed through several corridors in his search, but in vain. At last, worried and a little anxious, he turned to regain his rooms through the long saloon where he had found his wife previously. It was deserted now; the last caller had left--even frivolity had its prescribed limits. He was consequently startled by a gentle murmur from one of the heavily curtained window recesses. It was a woman's voice--low, sweet, caressing, and filled with an almost pathetic tenderness. And it was followed by a distinct gurgling satisfied crow.

Barker turned instantly in that direction. A step brought him to the curtain, where a singular spectacle presented itself.

Seated on a lounge, completely absorbed and possessed by her treasure, was the "horrid woman" whom his wife had indicated only a little while ago, holding a baby--Kitty's sacred baby--in her wanton lap! The child was feebly grasping the end of the slender jeweled necklace which the woman held temptingly dangling from a thin white jeweled finger above it. But its eyes were beaming with an intense delight, as if trying to respond to the deep, concentrated love in the handsome face that was bent above it.

At the sudden intrusion of Barker she looked up. There was a faint rise in her color, but no loss of sell-possession.

"Please don't scold the nurse," she said, "nor say anything to Mrs.

Barker. It is all my fault. I thought that both the nurse and child looked dreadfully bored with each other, and I borrowed the little fellow for a while to try and amuse him. At least I haven't made him cry, have I, dear?" The last epithet, it is needless to say, was addressed to the little creature in her lap, but in its tender modulation it touched the father's quick sympathies as if he had shared it with the child. "You see," she said softly, disengaging the baby fingers from her necklace, "that OUR sex is not the only one tempted by jewelry and glitter."

Barker hesitated; the Madonna-like devotion of a moment ago was gone; it was only the woman of the world who laughingly looked up at him. Nevertheless he was touched. "Have you--ever--had a child, Mrs. Horncastle?" he asked gently and hesitatingly. He had a vague recollection that she passed for a widow, and in his simple eyes all women were virgins or married saints.

"No," she said abruptly. Then she added with a laugh, "Or perhaps I should not admire them so much. I suppose it's the same feeling bachelors have for other people's wives. But I know you're dying to take that boy from me. Take him, then, and don't be ashamed to carry him yourself just because I'm here; you know you would delight to do it if I weren't."

Barker bent over the silken lap in which the child was comfortably nestling, and in that attitude had a faint consciousness that Mrs.

Horncastle was mischievously breathing into his curls a silent laugh. Barker lifted his firstborn with proud skillfulness, but that sagacious infant evidently knew when he was comfortable, and in a paroxysm of objection caught his father's curls with one fist, while with the other he grasped Mrs. Horncastle's brown braids and brought their heads into contact. Upon which humorous situation Norah, the nurse, entered.

"It's all right, Norah," said Mrs. Horncastle, laughing, as she disengaged herself from the linking child. "Mr. Barker has claimed the baby, and has agreed to forgive you and me and say nothing to Mrs. Barker." Norah, with the inscrutable criticism of her sex on her sex, thought it extremely probable, and halted with exasperating discretion. "There," continued Mrs. Horncastle, playfully evading the child's further advances, "go with papa, that's a dear. Mr. Barker prefers to carry him back, Norah."

"But," said the ingenuous and persistent Barker, still lingering in hopes of recalling the woman's previous expression, "you DO love children, and you think him a bright little chap for his age?"