Her heart was so light, she felt as if her feet no longer touched the ground and that she must float away into the blue ether like the ecstatic saints in the church pictures of her own country.

She talked incessantly of the coming being, and thought of nothing else waking or sleeping.

She had not the slightest doubt that it would be a boy.

Isabel had to lay the cards a dozen times, and the knave of spades came to the top nearly every time, an infallible promise of a boy.

And how beautiful he would be, the son of such a handsome father, the fruit of such transcendent love! She consulted with Wilhelm what name he should receive, and wanted a definite statement or a suggestion, or at least some slight conjecture as to the profession his father would choose for him.