The Tysons (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson)

uarreled seriously with Stanistreet. His wife, as might be imagined, was the cause. After a hot dispute, in which her name had been r

e scandal was bla

ed furtively on her footsteps, and inference met her and stared her in the face. No circumstance, not even Sir Peter's innocent admiration, was too trivial to furnish a l

rictly limited to those large confused occasions which might be considered open events-Drayton races, church, the hunt ball, and so on

woman in the pink gown?" he

" would be the answer, jerked over Miss Batche

hat is Mrs. N

r her self-possession and reply, "Not a person

miled or looked uncomforta

as Tyson. Opinions differed as to the precise extent of Mrs. Tyson's indiscretion; but her husband was hel

preoccupied with the unheroic fact, the ridiculous cause of a still more ridiculous quarrel.

stances which had made his position in Drayton Parva insupportable; it lent a little more point to the innuendo on every tongue, the intelligence in every eye. He was sick with disgust, and consumed with the desire to get out of it all, to cut Drayton Parva for goo

ion of late. Mrs. Wilcox was dimly, fitfully aware of the state of public opinion; but it did not disturb her in the least. She at once assumed the smile and the attitude of Hope; she smiled on her son-in-law's aberrations as she smiled on the ways of the universe at large, and for the same reason, that the one was about as intelligible as the other. She went about paying visits, and in the course of conversation gave people to u

orld. It had taken all the delicious tumult of the spring, all the flaming show of summer, to move him to a few pitiful smiles. He had none of the healthy infant's passion and lusty grasp of life; he seemed to touch it as he had touched his mother's breasts, delicately, tentatively

e; perhaps she was a little bit afraid of the professional severity which had so often held in check her fits of hysterical passion. Aided by Mrs. Wilcox and her own intuitions, after rejecting a dozen candidates on the ground of youth and frivolity, she chose a woman with calm blue eyes and a ma

Baby too agonized and languished. His food ceased to nourish him, his body wasted. They bought a cow for his sole use and benefit, and guarded it like a sacred animal but to no purpose. He drank of its milk and grew thinner than eve

e him, Nevil

"But you might as well poison the littl

in town, Baby was to be left behind at Thorneytoft for the good of his hea

d ever seen her caress the child. She handled him with a touch as light and fleeting as his own; her lips seemed to shrink from contact with his

were sitting in judgment on her. Swinny spoke from the height of a lofty morality; Pinker, being a footman of the world, took a humor

the servants' hall soon rece

tters. There were two-one from the master of the house; one also from Stanistreet, placed undermost by the discreet Pinker. The same thoughtful observer of character noticed that his mistress blushed and put her letters as

l drooping guilty attitude. Swinny noticed that the hearth was strewn with the fragments of torn letters.

ere, and she still sitting as before. She had not moved an inch. How did Swinny know that? Why, the tail of Mrs. Tyson's dress was touching the exact spot on the carpet it had touched before. (Swinny had made a note of the pattern.) And the

less figure by the hearth, and he

uld like to see him," said Swi

d, "I don't want to see him. I

ay. She could just see the downy back of his innocent head, and his ridiculous frock bulging r

er would not return that evening after a

Stanistreet's (a mere note) had been more tenderly dealt with. It was torn in four neat pieces; the text, though corrupt, was fairly legible, and left little to the ingenuity of the scholiast. The Captain was staying in the neighborhood. He

; he was too weak for that, but with a sound like the tongue-tied whimper of some tiny animal. Swinny had slept through worse noise many a night. Now he cried fro

had never heard of-"marasmus," the doctor c

child in the servants' hall, where the cook, being an affectionate motherly woman, made much of him, and fed him with strange food. He had had an "attack" the last time she did this, and Swinny, who valued her place for more reasons

his mother to do but to sit and look at him, or go softly to and fro, warming blankets. (It was odd, but Mrs. Nevill Tyson never questioned the woman's right t

her letter; and the baby was worse. The

ad than Mrs. Nevill Tyson's to make out the truth. Mrs. Wilcox had been much distressed by Molly's strange indifference to her maternal claims; but when you came to think of it, it

er throat shook. She was so young-only a child herself! A broad shaft of sunshine covered her small figure; her red dress glowed in the living light. Looking at her, a pathetic idea came to Mrs. Wilcox. "You never had a frock that became you more," she murmured between two sighs. Mrs. Nevill

at last. "Why can't you say w

"Yes, there is some danger. But

ay toward the long highroad, "if there is da

Baby dangerously i

he gave orders that when Captain Stanistreet called she would see him. As she could no

the walls covered with cheerful oleographs, the toys piled in the corner, he knew that this was the abode of innocence, a child's nursery. The place was flooded with sunshine. A woman sat by t

hoarsely when he was

Lond

you se

es

e com

dn't speak to him.

bundle. Up to the last she had let it lie on the nurse's knee. She had no

l," said she.

m the child's face, and Stanistreet g

Mrs. Nevill Tyson

ith tears. (She had loved the baby before she loved Pinker. Remorse moved her and righteous indignation.) Mrs. Nevill T

emoved it to its mother's knee. All her soul passed into the look wherewith she thanked him. Swinny

Molly," he

e's not dying. God isn't c

reast, hoping perhaps that his hands

him. His lips and the hollows under his eyes were blue. The collap

ce, simulating a smile. Then Mrs.

-she

n enough. He rose from