“No, look here, call him Damocles, and done with it.  The Sword hangs over him too, I suppose, and he’ll die by it, as all his ancestors have done.  Yes—­”

“It’s not a nice name, Sir, to my thinking,” interrupted the woman, “not for an only name—­and for an only child.  Let it be a second or third name, Sir, if you want to give him such an outlandish one.”

She fingered her new black dress nervously with twitching hands and the tight lips trembled.

“He’s to be named Damocles and nothing else,” replied the Master, and, as she turned away with a look of positive hate, he added sardonically:—­

“And then you can call him ‘Dam’ for short, you know, Nurse.”

Nurse Beaton bridled, clenched her hands, and stiffened visibly.  Had the man been her social equal or any other than her master, her pent-up wrath and indignation would have broken forth in a torrent of scathing abuse.

“Never would I call the poor motherless lamb Dam, Sir,” she answered with restraint.

“Then call him Dummy! Good morning, Nurse,” snapped the Colonel.

As she turned to go, with a bitter sigh, she asked in the hopeless tone of one who knows the waste of words:—­

“You will not repent—­I mean relent—­and come to the christening of your only son this afternoon, Sir?”

“Good morning, Nurse,” observed Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne, and resumed his hurried pacing of the verandah.

* * * * *

It is not enough that a man love his wife dearly and hold her the sweetest, fairest, and best of women—­he should tell her so, morning and night.

There is a proverb (the unwisdom of many and the poor wit of one) that says Actions speak louder than Words.  Whether this is the most untrustworthy of an untrustworthy class of generalizations is debateable.

Anyhow, let no husband or lover believe it.  Vain are the deeds of dumb devotion, the unwearying forethought, the tender care, the gifts of price, and the priceless gifts of attentive, watchful guard and guide, the labours of Love—­all vain.  Silent is the speech of Action.

But resonant loud is the speech of Words and profitable their investment in the Mutual Alliance Bank.

“Love me, love my Dog?” Yes—­and look to the dog for a dog’s reward.

“Do not show me that you love me—­tell me so.” Far too true and pregnant ever to become a proverb.

Colonel de Warrenne had omitted to tell his wife so—­after she had accepted him—­and she had died thinking herself loveless, unloved, and stating the fact.

This was the bitterest drop in the bitter cup of the big, dumb, well-meaning man.

And now she would never know....

She had thought herself unloved, and, nerve-shattered by her terrible experience with the snake, had made no fight for life when the unwanted boy was born.  For the sake of a girl she would have striven to live—­but a boy, a boy can fend for himself (and takes after his father)....