Jerry was asleep at last, but she sobbed occasionally in her sleep, and there were great tears on her eyelashes, while her fingers clutched Frank’s hand tightly as if fearing to let it go.  But he managed to disengage it and stealing cautiously from the room went back to the library where he sat late into the night, facing the future and wondering if he could meet it.

He had Jerry at the table next morning and saw that she was helped to everything she wanted without any regard to its suitability for her, and when his wife said rather curtly that she never knew that he was so fond of children before, he answered her: 

’I am only doing as I would wish some one to do to Maude if she were like this poor little girl.’

When, at last, the hour for the funeral arrived he placed her himself upon the high chair close to the coffin, where she sat through the short service, conspicuous in her gray cloak and blue hood, with her golden hair falling on her neck and piled in wavy masses on her forehead, while her bright eyes scanned the crowd curiously as if asking why they were there and why they were all looking so intently at her.  More than one kind-hearted woman went up and kissed her, and when, at the close of the services, Mr. Tracy held her in his arms for a last look at her mother, their tears fell fast for the child, so unconscious of the meaning of what was passing around her.

’Isn’t she beautiful!  Such lovely hair, and eyes, and dazzling complexion!’ was said by more than one; and then they speculated as to her future.

Would she go to the poor-house?  Would Frank Tracy keep her with all his children, or was it true, as they had heard, that Mr. Arthur Tracy was to adopt her at his own?  And where was Mr. Arthur?  He might, at least, have shown enough respect for the dead woman to come into the room, and they wanted so much to see him, for there was a great deal of curiosity with regard to the lunatic of Tracy Park among the lower class of people who had come to Shannondale during the eleven years of his absence.

But Arthur was sick in bed, suffering alternately from chills and a raging fever, which set his brain on fire and made him wilder than usual.  He had not slept well during the night.  Indeed, he said, he had not slept at all.  But this was a common assertion of his, and one to which Charles now paid little heed.

‘A man can’t snore and not sleep,’ was the unanswerable argument with which he refuted the sleepless nights of his master.

On this occasion, however, he had heard no snoring, and Arthur’s face, seen by the morning light, was a sufficient proof of the wakeful hours he had passed.  He, too, had heard the distant crying, and felt instinctively that it was not Maude’s.  Starting up in bed to listen, he said: 

‘What’s that?  Is that child here yet?’

‘Yes sir:  she is to stay till after the funeral,’ was Charles’ reply, and Arthur continued: