The body that bore the child was laid in the earth. His mother had helplessly forsaken the infant, but the God in another woman had taken him up. There was a soul to love him, two arms to carry him, a strong heart to shelter him.

Sir Wilton returned to London, and there enjoyed himself—not much, but at least comfortable in the knowledge that no woman sat at Mortgrange with a right to complain that he lived a life of pleasure without her. He moved in society, beginning to assume the staidness, if not dullness, of a man whose first youth has departed. But he was only less frolicsome, not more human. He was settling down to what he had made himself. No virtue could claim a share in the diminished rampancy of his vices.

With the first unrecognized sense of approaching age, the idea of a quieter life, with a woman whose possession would make him envied, grew mildly attractive. A brilliant marriage in another county would, in addition, avenge him in the minds of those in his own who had despised his first choice. With judicial family-eye, therefore, he began to survey the eligible women of his acquaintance. It was to his disadvantage that an heir already lay crying in the nurse’s arms, for any woman who might willingly be mother to the inheritor of such a property as his would certainly not find the notion attractive that her firstborn would be her husband’s second son. But who could tell—possibly he would be lucky and the heir that fate had palmed upon him might be doomed to go the way of so many infants!

He spread the report that the boy was sickly, and the notion that he was not likely to live prevailed about Mortgrange. However it was originated, this rumour was nourished by the fact that he was seen so seldom. In reality, there was not a healthier child in all England than Richard Lestrange.

Sir Wilton’s relations took as little interest in the heir as they did sir Wilton himself, and there was little reason for any of them to visit Mortgrange. The aunt-mother, therefore, had her own way with him. She was not liked in the house, the servants said she cared only for the little toad of a baronet, and they would do nothing for her comfort. They had a shadow of respect for her, however. If she encouraged no familiarity, she did not meddle and was independent of their aid. Even the milking of the cow which had been set apart for the child, she did herself. She sought no influence in the house, and was both little loved and little heeded.

Sir Wilton had not again seen his heir, who was now almost a year old, when the rumour reached Mortgrange that the baronet was about to be married.

Naturally, the news was disquieting to Jane. She hoped, however, that the stepmother might care as little for the child as the father did, and that he would therefore—for some years, at least—be left to her care. The loving woman lived in fear that they might be parted. More terrible was the thought that her baby might become a man like his father.