After luncheon I talked with Lord Chiltern a little. Now that the diamond was safely back, nothing appeared to matter very much to him.
While we were having coffee after luncheon Ronald’s nurse brought him in. He was very like Catherine, I thought — I’d not seen him for some months — except that he was a sturdy robust little fellow. His eyes sparkled and his cheeks were rosy red from a vigorous life in the country air.
“Oh I say, mother, is he here?” he whispered loudly. “Will he tell me a story about the war?”
In that house of tragedy the child had walked untouched. I shuddered as I thought what potentialities lay behind red cheeks and merry eyes if old Scoville was wrong and heredity counted, after all. What could a child hope to be, whose father was a cunning scoundrel, a blackmailer
