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Rh This was not a strictly moral sentiment, but it served to interrupt Edgar's rather serious train of thought.

"So that he will be a true child of yours, too," he said.

Lucia always appreciated any tribute to her charms, whoever offered it.

"Oh, Edgar, don't flirt with me," she said. "I fluttered one—what is the masculine for dovecot? And was not that sufficient? And here we are at the dovecot I allude to," she added, rather neatly, as they passed through the lodge gates.

But his responsible mind went back to what she had said before.

"You talk the most delicious nonsense, my darling," he said, "and you talk it so well that it seems as if you meant it for sense. For instance, when you said you hoped he would break every eligible heart. True, I replied in the same daffing strain. How excellent some of these Scotch words are, though that, curiously enough, is a Saxon root! But to stop daffing, what a responsibility is ours, what a sweet and serious responsibility!"

Edgar was looking straight out in front of him, and Lucia made the Archdeacon face all to herself. She knew there was more to come; when Edgar's periods began like that they were not soon overpast. Often before to-day she, who had the most excellent memory, would repeat them to Charlie, and being excellent in mimicry also, she often made him speechless with appreciative laughter. But now she could never again laugh with him at these pomposities; she could not even laugh herself. They were among the insupportable things which must continue to be tolerated.

Edgar cleared his throat; he had made an admirable speech in the House only yesterday, but he felt more deeply on this subject than on the question of small holdings.

"I have sometimes wondered, my Lucia," he said, "if you ever really see the responsibility which our love has entailed. Nothing affects a man's subsequent life more than do the earliest impressions of his childhood, and as soon as the boy begins to receive conscious impressions from outside, it will become our sacred duty to see that those impressions are all noble, all fine. Beauty, not only physical, natural beauty, but moral beauty, must surround him. Harsh temper must never come near him, nor meanness, nor falsity. How our horizons have extended since that wonderful day in June when our child was born to us! How tremendous have the issues of our love for each other