Gloria Mundi. Frederic Harold

trick of a child, eh? What do they call it, posthumous?” Cora panted, still with the rough voice which had shaken off the yoke of tuition.

      Edith lifted her head. “That is absurd,” she answered, curtly.

      As they confronted each other thus, a moving shadow outside caught their notice. Instinctively turning their eyes, they beheld through the glass a stranger, a slender young man with a soft hat of foreign fashion, striding across the lawn away from the house. He held his head high in the air, and they could see that the hands carried stiffly outstretched at his sides were clenched.

      “He struts across the turf as if he owned it,” said Edith, clutching vaguely at the meaningless relief which this interruption seemed to offer.

      But Mrs. Edward had sunk info the chair, and buried her face in her black-gloved hands.