The Author of Beltraffio

ersation failed of ease, and I, for my part, felt there would be a shade of hypocrisy in my now trying to make myself agreeable to the

y thinking the beautiful mother and beautiful child, interlaced there against their background of roses, a picture such as I doubtless shouldn't soon see again. I was free, I supposed, to go into the house and write letters, to sit in the drawing-room, to repair to my own apartment and take a nap; but the only use I made of my freedom was to linger still in my chair and say to myself that the light hand of Sir Joshua might have painted Mark Ambient's wife and son. I found myself looking perpetually at the latter small mortal, who looked constantly back at me, and that was enough to detain me. With these vaguely-amused eyes he smiled, and I felt it an absolute impossibility to abandon a child with such an expression. His attention never strayed; it attached i

into the house. Mark came and stood in front of his wife, looking down at the child, who immediately took hold of his h

, I suppose," Mrs. Ambie

the-way idea when one's c

uch better now," sounded

aying it to be agreeable? You've a gr

had wandered, caught my own as I watched him. "Do you think me agreeable?" he inquired with the candour of his a

you feel so lusty?" Ambient went

mma's holdi

you when I come near!" cried M

on or concession. "You can go for Mackintosh if you like

e with a gaiety that I thought a little fal

n-nook, the perfect opportunity (if it was not an opportunity for that it was an opportunity for nothing) and the plea I speak of, which issued from the child's eyes and seemed to make him say: "The mother who bore me and who presses me here to her bosom-sympathetic little organism that I am-has really the kind of sensibility she has been represented to you as lacking, if you only look for it patiently and respectfully. How is it conceivable she shouldn't have it? How is it possible that I should have so much of it-for I'm quite full of it, dear strange gentleman-if it weren't also in some degree in her? I'm my great father's child, but I'm also my beautiful mother's, and I'm sorry for the difference between them!" So it shaped itself before me, the vision of reconciling Mrs. Ambient with her husband, o

tone that didn't make the contradiction

ng his mother but still looking at me. Then he added t

ies of my own," I said. "I kno

ou tell them

pleasure, if t

ed that just after leaving her the evening before, and after hearing her apply to her husband's writings the epithet already quoted, I had on going up to my room sat down to the perusal of those sheets of his new book that he had been so good as to lend me. I had sat entranced till nearly three in the morning-I had read them twice over.

the boy again sweetly s

t have caught the Doctor I got up and took a turn about the grounds. When I came back ten minutes later she was still in her place watching her boy, who had fallen asleep in her lap. As I drew near she put her finger to her lips and a short time afterwards rose, holding him; it being now best, she said, that she should take him upst

work and went so far as to say to myself that, if it were mine to sit and scribble in, there was no knowing but I might learn to write as well as the author of "Beltraffio." This distinguished man still didn't reappear, and I rummaged freely among his treasures. At last I took down a book that detained me a while and seated myself in a fine old leather chair by the window to turn it over. I had been occupied in this way for half an hour-a good part of the afternoon had waned-when I became conscious of another presence in the room and, looking up from my quarto, saw that

book?" she aske

I smiled; "with pre

rom home," Mark said, "and I went after him to where he was supposed to be. He had left the place, and I followed him to two or three others, which accounts for my delay." He was now with Mrs. Ambient, looking at the child, and was to see Mark again before leaving the house. My host noticed at the end of two minutes that the proof-sheets of his new book had been removed from the table; and when I told him, in reply to his question as to what I knew about them, that Mrs. Ambient had carried them off to read he turned almost pale with surprise. "What has suddenly made her so curious?" he cried; and I was obliged to tell him that I was at the bott

she saw me, with an air of triumph that struck me

saw him, at four o'clock, h

or got here he found diphtheritic symptoms. He ought to have been called, as I k

very happy there," I

no disposition to deny anything she might have told me, and I couldn't see that her satisfaction in being justified by the event relieved her little nephew's condition. The truth is that, as the sequel was to prove, Miss Ambient had some of the qualities of the sibyl and had therefore perhaps a right to the sibylline contortions. Her brother was so preoccupied that I felt my presence an indiscretion and was sorry I had promised to remain over the morrow. I put it to Mark that clearly I had best leave them in the morning; to which he replied that, on the contrary, if he was to pass the next days in the fidgets my company would distract his attent

n the morning freshness, after a night of watching, she looked as much "the type of the lady" as her sister-in-law had described her. Her appearance, I suppose, ought to have reassured me; but I was still nervous and uneasy, so that I shrank from meeting her with the necessary challenge. None t

he family I should like very muc

at me from head to foot and then said

't see

y, after a restless night, that she didn't wish him disturbed. I assured her I wouldn't

y much. Are yo

the honest practitioner in high resentment. An

is good woman had admitted her and she had found him quiet, but flushed and "unnatural," with his mother sitting by his bed. "She held his hand in one of hers," said Miss Ambient, "and in the other-what do you think?-the proof-sheets of Mark's new book!" She was reading them there intently: "did you ever hear of anything so extraordinary? Such a very odd time to be reading an author whom she never could abide!" In her agitation Miss Ambient was guilty of this vulgarism of speech, and I was so impressed by her narrative that only in recalling her words later did I notice the lapse. Mrs. Ambient had looked up from her reading with her finger on her lips-I recognised the gesture she had addressed me in the afternoon-and, though the nurse was about to go to rest, had not encouraged

guarded to the end. I believe he never suspected it, though of this I'm not absolutely sure. If he had so much as an inkling the line he had taken, the line of absolute negation of the matter to himself, shows an immense effort of the will. I may at last lay bare my secret, giving it for what it is worth; now that the main sufferer has gone, that he has begun to be

ned his letters and newspapers and pretended to drink his coffee. But I took these movements for mechanical and was little surprised when he sud

llo mio?" Miss Ambient quavere

impulse, exchanging a glance of some alarm; and he continued to stare into the garden. "In heaven's name what has got possession of Bea

ug. "My poor Mark, Beat

-bolted and barred the door. She refuse

sh see him an hour ago!" Mis

door!" And Mark brought his fist down upon the sideboard, whic

ould be supreme in such a situation. Trust a mother-a devoted mother, my dear friend!" With such words as these I tried to soothe and comfort him, and, marvellous to relate, I succeeded, with the help of many cigarettes, in mak

, Mark-go for the

him?" my poor friend cried,

one! But she's frightened, a

if he came back!" I felt

not a messenger. You must see him and tell him it's to

God!" Ambient cried, bounding with

mbient; but she checked me by grasping my arm while we heard the wheels of the dog-cart rattle away

ink of what,

thing that has happe

rst allowed for some great extravagance. But I looked at her hard, and

mpathetic, because you've imagination," Miss Ambient was good enough to add, interrupting

t? I don't understand you.

heedless of my emphasis. "It was the book

as murdered her child?" I deman

he determined to rescue him-to prevent him from ever being touched. He had a crisis at two o'clock in the morning. I know that from the nurse, who had left her then, but

she stood there with her tearless glare. "Do you pret

t she gave him no remedies; she did nothing the Doctor ordered. Everything's

at the monstrous meaning of her words. Yet they came amazingly straight, and if they did have a sense I saw myself too woefully

est, but you're really quite ready to believe me. You've received an

ad done; that her fright itself betrayed her; and that she would now give heaven and earth to save the child. "Let us hope she will!" I said, looking at my watch and trying to time poor Ambient; whereupon my companion r

ife's conduct. She agreed with me that there was misery enough in the house without her contributing a new anguish, and that Mrs. Ambient's proceedings might be explained, to her husband's mind, by the extravagance of a jealous devotion. Poor Mark came back with the Doctor much sooner than we could have hoped, but we knew five minutes afterwards that it was all too late. His sole, his adored little son was more exquisitely beautiful in death than he had been in life. Mrs. Ambient's grief was frantic; she lost her head and said strange things. As for Mark's-but I won't speak of that. Basta, basta, as he used to say. Miss Ambient kept her secret-I've already had occasi