Nurse Beaton.
"_Will_ you give your son a name, Sir ?" she said, and it was evident in voice and manner that the question had been asked before and had received an unsatisfactory, if not unprintable; reply.

Every line of feature and form seemed to express indignant resentment.

She had nursed and foster-mothered the child's mother, and--unlike the man--had found the baby the chiefest consolation of her cruel grief, and already loved it not only for its idolized mother's sake, but with the devotion of a childless child-lover.
"The christening is fixed for to-day, Sir, as I have kept reminding you, Sir," she added.
She had never liked the Colonel--nor considered him "good enough" for her tender, dainty darling, "nearly three times her age and no better than he ought to be".
"Name ?" snarled Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne.

"Name the little beast?
Call him what you like, and then drown him." The tight-lipped face of the elderly nurse flushed angrily, but before she could make the indignant reply that her hurt and scandalized look presaged, the Colonel added:-- "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.