“I should like to see my little brother, papa—­if I may,” I said.

He paused thoughtfully for a few minutes, then answered: 

“I am quite sure you may, Laura; I will take you.”

We went, without making even the faintest sound, to the pretty rooms that had been set aside as nurseries.  One of them had been beautifully decorated with white lace and flowers.  There in the midst stood the berceaunette in which I had lain when I was a child.

My father took me up to it—­at first I saw only the flowers, pale snowdrops and blue violets with green leaves; then I saw a sweet waxen face with closed eyes and lips.

Oh! baby brother, how often I have longed to be at rest with you!  I was not frightened; the beautiful, tiny face, now still in death, had no horrors for me.

“May I kiss him, papa?” I asked.  Oh, baby brother, why not have stayed with us for a few hours at least?  I should like to have seen his pretty eyes and to have seen him just once with him lips parted; as it was, they were closed in the sweet, silent smile of death.

“Papa, what name should you have given him had he lived?” I asked.

“Your mother’s favorite name—­Gerald,” he replied.  “Ah, Laura, had he lived, poor little fellow, he would have been ’Sir Gerald Tayne, of Tayne Abbey.’  How much dies in a child—­who knows what manner of man this child might have been or what he might have done?”

“Papa, what is the use of such a tiny life?” I asked.

“Not even a philosopher could answer that question,” said my father.

I kissed the sweet, baby face again and again.  “Good-by, my little brother,” I said.  Ah! where shall I see his face again?

CHAPTER IV.

My mother was in danger and my baby brother dead.  The gloom that lay over our house was something never to be forgotten; the silence that was never broken by one laugh or one cheerful word, the scared faces—­for every one loved “my lady.”  One fine morning, when the snowdrops had grown more plentiful, and there was a faint sign of the coming spring in the air, they took my baby brother to bury him.  Such a tiny coffin, such tiny white wreaths, a little white pall covered with flowers.  My father would not let black come near him.

My father wept bitter tears.

“There sleeps my little son and heir, Laura,” he said to me—­“my little boy.  It is as though he had just peeped out of Heaven at this world, and, not liking it, had gone back again.”

A pretty little white monument was put up to the baby Gerald.  My mother chose the epitaph, which I had always thought so pretty.  It was simply this—­“The angels gather such lilies for God.”

By degrees some little sunshine stole back, the dreadful silence lessened, the servants began to walk about without list slippers, the birds were carried back to the beautiful aviary—­my mother’s favorite nook; the doctors smiled as they came down the grand staircase.  I heard Sir Roland whistling and singing as he had done weeks ago.