In the Towers four desperate souls fought their battle, and to none of them did the dawn bring comfort. In her room Lady Elizabeth sat motionless before her open window, and, like Agrippina, saw the long line of destruction that the child she had borne had brought to her and to her house. Shortly before the end of the evening\'s entertainment, she had received a message from Henry, begging to be excused, as a matter of great importance had arisen which prevented him from remaining with his guests.
Once she thought of venturing to go to him, as she listened to his restless pacing above her, but fear of his displeasure and a physical shrinking from a painful scene forced her to keep her watch alone. To-night\'s confession of his use of the Fund was the gravest of his many offences; she could not shake herself free of its grave consequences. Along with it came the memory of the faces of Jim and Diana as she had last seen them at midnight. The guests had departed; Diana was entering her own apartments, while from the landing Lady Elizabeth could see Jim below her as he started for the garden. Both their faces were stamped with a new, vital truth which, in its immensity, they seemed to find difficult to grasp. She recalled the wistful, inquiring expression of Diana\'s look as she turned to call her good-night to Jim. Even more vividly she recalled the answer of his eyes. The mute, unspoken thoughts that lay there were haunting her now with their tragic possibilities. A numb fear possessed her.
Above her, Henry\'s monotonous steps continued; her imagination began to play tricks with her. The steady tread above seemed to change into the tentative, faltering toddle of a baby boy; she remembered that the room over her was the old nursery, now used by Henry for his own apartment. How often she and his father had listened and rejoiced at the stumbling efforts which they could hear in the early morning! The terrible sympathy of a mother\'s sorrowing womb, that can reach the most poignant of all human anguish, caused her suddenly to start to her feet; a physical craving to hold again the tiny body firm against her own, and ease this suffering, overpowered her. She could hear the broken steps of the long ago; she could see only the naked, mottled body of the sturdy chap that she had so often clasped close and smothered with her kisses. She stretched out her arms as if in search of it. The longing to touch again the soft warm flesh of her own creation became intense, from her wildly beating heart to the tightly contracted throat there grew a spasm of pain that ended in a long, broken sob. She forgot all the years of suffering, the disappointments, and to-night\'s crowning tragedy of Henry\'s wilful treachery to her and his house.
She was the young mother again. The half shy, inquiring face of the babe with its tight corkscrew curls, as she had seen him first walk across the long nursery to fall into her arms at the open doorway, was all that she could remember. Other ghosts crowded into the room; the husband of her love-days—for Elizabeth Kerhill had passionately loved her boy\'s father—stood, as he often had stood, close behind her at the nursery door and joyed with her at the beauty of its tiny occupant. The old wound, which nature mercifully in the passage of years had alleviated, again ached as it had in the first hours of her great sorrow at his death.
Suddenly the pacing above ceased. She became conscious of a terrible anxiety to know why; she feared the stillness; the steady beat had been an unconscious comfort. Her tired brain grew more fanciful. Did she imagine or did she really see the pale spectre of her husband at the farther end of the room beckoning her to follow him? He seemed to open the door into the corridor and disappear into the gloom. There was a slight movement from above, significant in its abruptness; it was as though a quick decision had been made by Henry. Down the corridor she fled, obeying a compelling instinct. The pale mist of the first streaks of dawn was struggling through the distant windows. She remembered a similar hurried rush to the nursery, when the tiny, twisted body was attacked with writhing convulsions. Quickly she sped along the hallway, around a twisted enclosure, and up the broad staircase until she reached the nursery. Without a pause she swung open the heavy oak door; then she knew why the warning had come to her.
At the creaking of the door, Henry started; he was unaware that it had remained unlocked. For a moment he stared at his mother as though she were an apparition. He was standing near the open drawer of a huge desk; the glint of fire-arms in it shone clear against the flicker of the spluttering candles. He made no attempt to move. His eyes were held by the figure at the door, but no words came from the moving lips of Lady Elizabeth. Instinctively, both their glances went to the open drawer with its certain means of death. Henry turned away; he tried to close the case. Through the silent room came the sobbed name of his childhood days.
"Ba-ba! Ba-ba!"
He felt her strong arms fasten tight around him; unresisting, he was gathered up close against the trembling body of his mother, as she drew him down into a big settle. He made no attempt to speak. He heard only the name of his babyhood in his mother\'s moans, as she pressed his tense face to hers, kissed the faunlike ears, while her hands strayed, as they used to do, over the long limbs that, relaxed, lay helpless against hers. The old nursery again held her treasure, and mechanically the tremulous lips fell to crooning a long-forgotten lullaby.
Gradually he slept with his head on her breast. Straight and stiff the early shadows found her, while the bitter tears furrowed her face, as she held her child, warm and alive, against her heart. During the long hours of her vigil she heard distinctly the crunching of footsteps on the gravel-walk outside as some one passed and repassed the east wing. But she was little concerned with the world without.
Below, unconscious of the tragedy so close to him, Jim, whose step it was Lady Kerhill had heard on the gravel-path, fought through the long night for his right to happiness. His entire horizon seemed blocked by the unyielding figures of Lady Elizabeth and Henry; behind them, tantalizing him with the sweetness of the vision, he could see Diana\'s face illumined with its new light of wonder. The heavy dews, which gave to the old garden its fragrant, green, sweet odors, drenched him as he paced along the path under the giant trees. He was insensible to his wet clothes—to the tumbled hair which the dampness knotted about his head in kinky curls. The tangle of his thoughts proved too difficult for him to unravel; the night had been so charged with emotions that he could hardly look truthfully into his own h............