"Exactly so," he thought; but her face showed absolute unconsciousness.
"What do you find to do with yourself?" he asked suddenly. He felt he would go mad in a week.
"Do!"--she smiled. "Why, I never have half enough time! You see we can't afford to keep experienced servants, as yet. This house is really beyond our income, but my husband--Ted, I mean--was afraid I should not thrive in the town. It is very good of him, isn't it? to go to such expense for me."
"Very," assented Lord Blackborough, recognising Ted's phraseology and feeling bored.
"So I have to do most of the cooking," she went on quite eagerly. "It is rather fun, though Ted is quite awfully particular about his food. But he says I am getting quite a--a _cordon bleue_--that's right, isn't it?"
"Quite right," assented Ned gravely. He was beginning to wonder how he should get away from this atmosphere of satisfaction.
"And then," she went on, and whether she smiled or was grave he could not tell, for her face was bent over her work, "I have so much to think of--you cannot know how much. Sometimes I feel as if, somehow, the whole world was bound up in me."
For the life of him he could not help a thrill in answer to the thrill of her voice. So he sat looking at her sewing garments for another man's child, until his heart waxed hot, and he said--
"Has it never struck you, Aura, that all this is--just a little rough on me?"
She looked up at him, her beautiful eyes, twin stars of mysterious double life, brimming with swift tears.
"You--you shall be its godfather," she said softly.
He could have cursed, he could have laughed, he could have cried over the pure ridiculousness of the reply; but the pure motherhood in her eyes was too much for him.
"The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." The phrase came back to his memory, reproving his individualism, setting aside all other claims as trivial.
"Well!" he said, rising as he spoke, "there is nothing more to be said. So--having found you happy--I must be going."
"Going," she echoed incredulously. "Oh, no! You must stop and see Ted. It is Saturday and he is always home by three. You might stop and come with us to Chorley Hill; we go there every week because I like it. You can see the Welsh mountains quite distinctly if it is clear."