The Lamp of Fate

sinfectants pervaded the atmosphere. Upst

awns and well-kept paths with their background of leafless trees. It seemed to him that he had been stand

deed, by this time, the thing had become so much a habit that no doubts or apprehensions concerning the sex of the eldest child were ever entertained. It was accepted

f no questionings on that particular score. He was merely a prey to

for her own life and another's. Suddenly they swung back to the time, a year ago, when he had first met her-an elus

as is bred in that land of mellow warmth and colour, where the flower

r and ill-matched people-Hugh, a man of seven-and-thirty, the strict and somewhat self-conscious head of a conspicuously devout old English family,

st themselves at such an obvious mismating, knowing well how inevitably it wo

whose salient characteristics were an overweening pride of race and a religious zeal amounting almost to

ther had counted in the scale

accompanies the type. Be that as it may, he was swept completely off his feet by the dancer's magic beauty. The habits and training of a lifetime went by the board, and n

dictates of inclination and conscience. Everything that was man in him responded passionately to the appeal and charm of Diane's personality

lovable and kind-hearted and pagan, and possessing but the haziest notions of self-control and self-discipline. Even so, left to t

ood his sister, Catherine, a rigidly austere woman, in hers

ome, managing his house-and, on the strength of her four years' seniority in age, himself as we

use attached to the Coverdale estates, but if the idea had occurred to her, she had never

lf with Diane Wielitzska. It was his duty to have married a woman of the type conventionally termed "good," whose blood-and religious outlook-were alike unimpeachable; and since he had lamentably failed in

ally worshipped the ground she walked on. Conversely, Virginie's attitude towards Miss Vallincourt was one of frank hostility. And deep in the hearts of both Diane and Virginie lurked a confi

ttle baby, I shall have done my duty as the wife of a great English mi

d reply with infi

a little son, Ma'moiselle Catheri

place of authority by a slim, capable, and apparently quite unconcerned piece of femininity equipped against rebellion in all the starched panoply of a nu

rather formal air of stateliness about him, a suggestion of the grand seigneur, and the

omething in her arms-something almost indistinguishable am

. He felt rather as though all the blood in his body had rushed to one pla

ely stretched out his arms for the tiny, o

voice as she placed his child in his arms-very quiet, yet

al which God Himself has set

rms, sought his sister's face. It was a thin, hard face, sharply cut like carved ivory; the eyes a light, cold blue, a

ach other in silence. Then, all at once, Ca

jeered violently. "A girl-

gir

pidly at the ba

or eight generations the first-born has been a son. And the ninth is a girl! The daughter