“There’s no one there,—­not a soul.  Now dearie, dearie, be reasonable.  You can see for yourself there’s not a creature,” said the grandmother.

“Oh, my baby, my baby!  He sees something we can’t see,” the young woman cried.  “Something has happened to his father, or he’s going to be taken from me!” she said, holding the child to her in a sudden passion.  The other women rushed to her to console her,—­the mother with reason, and Jervis with poetry.  “It’s the angels whispering, like the song says.”  Oh, the pang that was in the heart of the other whom they could not hear!  She stood wondering how it could be,—­wondering with an amazement beyond words, how all that was in her heart, the love and the pain, and the sweetness and bitterness, could all be hidden,—­all hidden by that air in which the women stood so clear!  She held out her hands, she spoke to them, telling who she was, but no one paid any attention; only the little dog Fido, who had been basking by the fire, sprang up, looked at her, and retreating slowly backwards till he reached the wall, sat down there and looked at her again, with now and then a little bark of inquiry.  The dog saw her.  This gave her a curious pang of humiliation, yet pleasure.  She went away out of that little centre of human life in a great excitement and thrill of her whole being.  The child had seen her, and the dog; but, oh heavens! how was she to work out her purpose by such auxiliaries as these?

She went up to her old bedchamber with unshed tears heavy about her eyes, and a pathetic smile quivering on her mouth.  It touched her beyond measure that the child should have that confidence in her.  “Then God is still with me,” she said to herself.  Her room, which had been so warm and bright, lay desolate in the stillness of the night; but she wanted no light, for the darkness was no darkness to her.  She looked round her for a little, wondering to think how far away from her now was this scene of her old life, but feeling no pain in the sight of it,—­only a kind indulgence for the foolish simplicity which had taken so much pride in all these infantile elements of living.  She went to the little Italian cabinet which stood against the wall, feeling now at least that she could do as she would,—­that here there was no blank of human unconsciousness to stand in her way.  But she was met by something that baffled and vexed her once more.  She felt the polished surface of the wood under her hand, and saw all the pretty ornamentation, the inlaid-work, the delicate carvings, which she knew so well; they swam in her eyes a little, as if they were part of some phantasmagoria about her, existing only in her vision.  Yet the smooth surface resisted her touch; and when she withdrew a step from it, it stood before her solidly and square, as it had stood always—­a glory to the place.  She put forth her hands upon it, and could have traced the waving lines of the exquisite work, in which some artist soul had worked itself