His wife was about to make him a father.

He now humoured her every whim, and finding that his presence exercised a most soothing effect upon her, he devoted to her all the time he possibly could, attending to her with a loving watchfulness that did doubtlessly keep off the terrible calamity with which she was threatened.

She herself was conscious of this--she felt, when he was by her, that the brightness of his love stood between her and the impending shadow, hiding it for the time.

But when alone she would weep miserably at the awful fancies which she could not drive away. The shadow was gradually, daily, surrounding her.

She felt that soon it would close in altogether upon her--she would be mad--there was but a slight part.i.tion to break down, and then her mind would die.

The long silence of Susan Riley terrified her. She knew that an evil eye was ever watching an opportunity for her destruction, and in her monomania--for her terror of the woman amounted to this--she attributed impossible powers of mischief to her malignant hate.

She had received two warnings from her enemy already, and she felt an intuition, a certain conviction, which she could not reason away, that there would be a _third_--that a last, cruellest blow would be struck which would prove fatal to her; and she would kneel down in her room and pray in tears and agony that the blow might strike herself alone, and not her husband and the little babe that was to be soon born into the world.

To her it seemed unnatural and dreadful that she who had once so nearly been a killer of babes should become a mother. Was it--she thought--the just vengeance of G.o.d that was about to visit her? Was she to have a child, only that it might be torn from her at once, only that her punishment might be the more severe in its remorse-awaking appositeness to her crime!

She remembered that first warning, that letter in which Susan had written, "_I'll stand as fairy G.o.dmother to your baby_," underlining the ominous sentence. These words seemed now full of fearful meaning; they were never out of her mind; and she could always see them before her standing out in characters of blood. "She is capable even of that," she thought with horror, as the idea of a fiendish revenge occurred to her.

Shortly before her confinement, she suffered from an extreme agitation.

She felt that the whole world was about to slip away from her. "And what will happen to my baby," she said to herself, "if I go mad and cannot protect it? No! I must not go mad! O G.o.d! give me strength against madness. She will take my innocent babe away if I am not there to watch."

In her fear for her unborn child, she thought of breaking her oath and telling her husband all; then she reflected that to do this would be of no avail. What could she tell him?--that the Secret Society to which she had belonged had been formed for a certain object; that the Society had broken up. That was all--what definite accusation could she make against anyone? She had no reason for imagining that Susan Riley was plotting her destruction, except that a strong, instinctive voice told her so. If she confided this to her husband, he would merely regard her dread as a species of insane delusion. No! better far to preserve her secret, and endeavour to shield her child by other means.

So one night she came up to the chair on which her husband was sitting, and placing herself at his feet, she seized his hands and looked earnestly into his face.

"Harry!" she said, "I have something very important to ask you."

"What is it, my pet?"

"You will not laugh at me or think me foolish?"

"Why, Mary! you know I will not do so, especially when your poor little face looks so serious as it does now."

"Yes! but, Harry," she persisted, "I know you _will_ think me foolish; you will imagine that I have got some delusion into my head when you hear what I have to say."

"Well, let us hear what it is, darling," he said, kissing her.

"Harry, if--if--anything happens to me, what will become of my baby?"

He looked puzzled, not understanding the drift of her question, so replied: "My dear Mary, you must not take it into your head that you are going to be ill."

"Yes! but _if_ I am," she continued, anxiously--"if I am, who will take care of my baby?"

"My dear child, don't worry yourself about such a matter as that.

Supposing even that you were ill, there are such things as trustworthy nurses to be found, I suppose."

"Never!" she almost shrieked in her excitement, as she tightened her clasp of his hands. "Never, oh, never! You don't know--you don't know!

Harry, if I am ill, send for your sister's nurse--I can trust her. But you must promise me that no strange nurse--no other nurse but that one--comes into this house. I should go mad--I should die, if I thought that there was any chance of your doing so. Oh, Harry! you will kill me if you won't grant me this. I tell you you will kill me and your child, too."

"My darling! my poor little darling! do not be so agitated. I will promise you this. Calm yourself, Mary; you can rely on me to carry out all your wishes."

"That is it! I must feel that I can rely on you or I shall die. Do not promise me this merely to humour me, Harry--to humour what you think is a morbid fancy. When I am lying ill, dear, I must feel that friends are watching my baby as I would myself. Oh, Harry! if I could only tell you--if I could only tell you! This is not a mere fancy--I know that there is a great peril before us, and I do not know whether we can escape it."

She wrung her hands as she uttered these last words in accents of wild anguish; then pausing, she looked into his eyes for a few moments and continued, earnestly: "Harry, I see in your face that you do not believe this: you think that I am merely crazed and nervous. For G.o.d's sake, put that idea out of your mind. Oh, if I could tell you! and yet what could I tell you? I don't myself know yet what is the danger, or whence it is coming."

She burst into hysterical tears and hid her face in her hands.

"Mary, dear," her husband said in earnest tones as he folded her in his arms; "my dear little wife, I promise to you, whatever opinions I may hold about this fear of yours, that no one shall go near our baby except my sister and her own children's nurse, if you are ill. No strange servants shall be allowed to enter this house. You can be quite sure, dear, that I will do what I say."

"Thank you, Harry! Ah! I know I can rely upon you now. What a weight you have taken off my mind!" She paused a moment and shuddered as she began to speak again in an awed voice. "Oh, husband! I dreamt last night that I was so ill. They had to take my baby away from me; and a woman who hates me came up, and they gave my baby to her to nurse. She took it in her arms and smiled at me--such a smile of triumphant malice! I knew then that my baby would die, I knew that she would kill it; but I could not tell you, I could not warn you. I lay there on the bed, so very ill, so weak, that I could not move even a finger. I tried to scream out, but no voice would come. I lay there and saw my child being carried off to perish, and a word would have saved him, and I could not utter it. Oh, it was awful!" Her brow knitted, and her gaze seemed to turn inwards as she recalled that dreadful vision. "But, Harry!" she continued anxiously, "remember that it is not because of dreams and delusions that I fear for my baby. There is a real danger. Oh, it is horrible that I cannot explain it all to you!"

He soothed her mind; and she felt satisfied that, were she to be ill, and were it found necessary to take her baby from her, her husband would keep off all approach of the danger she feared, even as much as if he himself believed in its reality.

Mary's fears, though exaggerated by ill-health, were far from being without foundation; for Susan Riley was now possessed by the one idea how to gratify her fierce l.u.s.t of vengeance against the girl who had stood in her way and thwarted her plans. She discovered where Mary lived, and she made it almost a practice to walk to St. John's Wood every Sunday, so that, herself unseen, she could observe her enemy coming out of church.

On the Sunday that followed the sending of her second warning, Susan waited in this manner outside the church-door, and her keen eye detected on the face of Mary a shade that had not been there before. It was clear to her that the letter had made the young wife unhappy; she noticed how pale and thin the face was becoming again; so she returned to her cigar-shop with a light and exultant heart, encouraged by her success to ponder over a more deadly attack.

A month or so after this, an illness compelled Susan to abandon these visits to St John's Wood for some time.

When she was recovered she started one Sunday morning to the church door, anxious to see what change might have come over Mary during those weeks.

It was a bitterly cold day towards the end of winter. A keen north-east wind was blowing. Occasional strong squalls accompanied by stinging sleet rushed down the dreary streets; but yet Susan, with the energy of hate, walked all the way, and posted herself as usual on a path among the grey grave-stones, to await the coming out of the Duncans from the church.

She had to wait long, for in her eagerness she had arrived much too early. She walked up and down the frozen gravel-path, reading the inscriptions on the grave-stones, stamping her feet to keep them warm, and listening impatiently to the sounds of alternate chanting, reading and hymn-singing, that issued from the building. Then there came, what appeared to her outside the church to be a long silence. This, she knew, must be the sermon.

"Curse that parson! How long he is with his Firstly, Secondly, Thirdly!" she muttered to herself. "When _will_ he come to his Lastly?

Ah! there is the final hymn at last. Now for the collection, and the respectable crowd will pour out to their early Sunday dinners. We will see what you look like now, Mrs. Henry Duncan. If you look happy, I must find something to check your joy without delay."

But Susan was to be disappointed this day. She stood by the side of the path, her thick veil drawn over her face to prevent recognition, and watched all the congregation as they came out. But she saw neither Dr.

Duncan nor his wife. This puzzled her a good deal, for she knew that Mary had become very regular in her attendance at church.

She went there again on the following Sunday, and then she saw Dr.

Duncan come out alone at the conclusion of the service. She longed to go up to him and learn what was the cause of his wife's absence, but she felt afraid of the doctor, and did not relish the idea of confronting him.

But she carefully scanned his face, and thought she could read much anxiety on it. "I suppose Mary is ill," she pondered, "I wonder what it is, but I will soon find that out."

A few days afterwards, the wind having changed, the weather became delightfully mild and pleasant. It was the birthday of the young spring, a glorious sunny morning, when Susan, who had been fretting herself with curiosity, at last made up her mind to take a bold step. She would call at the doctor's house on some pretence or other when he was out, and discover what had happened to Mary.

As usual she went on foot. Her route lay through the Regent's Park. She was pa.s.sing along a path, bordered by tall shrubberies, meditating on what she was about to do, on what she should say to Mary in case they met, when she perceived two women walking slowly towards her who evidently bore the relation to each other of mistress and maid.

When they approached nearer, she recognised in the mistress the very woman she was seeking--Yes! there could be no doubt about it--she had found her enemy at last.

There was a seat in a little recess among the bushes. Susan went to it and sat down, concealing her face as much as possible, but closely watching Mary as she went by. Susan saw that Mary walked on with a step that seemed mechanical, as if she was not conscious of what she was doing, or where she was. She looked neither to the right nor to the left, her eyes were directed to the ground. She did not address or notice in any way her companion, and appeared as one wholly absorbed by a hopeless melancholy.

"Why, she must have gone mad again!" thought Susan, and an incontrollable desire seized her to rise from her seat and address her victim--to satisfy herself as to the correctness of the suspicion. She was just on the point of following the impulse--Mary was now close by her--when an astonished look came suddenly to her face; she sank again upon the seat and sat still, allowing the two women to pa.s.s out of sight without disclosing her ident.i.ty.

Then having recovered from her surprise, she laughed to herself. "Oh!

that is the matter with you, my lady, is it? What a fool I must be not to have suspected that before. So I shall have to carry out my promise about acting as fairy G.o.d-mother soon, shall I?"