it that her breath touched the marble cheek and her own disordered hair rested upon the pillow of her child.  Even in her sleep her tears kept dropping from the long eyelashes, and the pale lips quivered in a grieved, touching way.  Hard indeed would Wilford have been had he cherished one bitter thought against the wife so wounded.  He could not when he saw her, but no one ever knew just what passed through his mind during the half hour he sat there beside her, scarcely stirring and not daring to kiss his child lest he should awaken her.  He could hear the ticking of his watch and the beating of his heart as he waited for the first sound which should herald Katy’s waking.

Suddenly there was a low, gasping moan, and Katy’s eyes unclosed and rested on her husband.  He was bending over her in an instant, and her arms were around his neck, while she said to him so sadly: 

“Our baby is dead—­you’ve nobody left but me; and oh!  Wilford, you will not blame me bringing baby here?  I did not think she would die.  I’d give my life for hers if that would bring her back.  Say, Wilford, would you rather it was me lying as baby lies, and she here in your arms?”

“No, Katy,” Wilford answered, and by his voice Katy knew that she was wholly forgiven, crying on his neck in a plaintive, piteous way, while Wilford soothed and pitied and caressed, feeling subdued and humbled, and we must confess it, feeling too how very good and generous he was to be thus forbearing, when but for Katy’s act of disobedience they might not now be childless!

* * * * *

With a great gust of tears Bell Cameron bent over the little form, and then enfolded Katy in a more loving embrace than he had ever given her before; but whatever she might have said was prevented by the arrival of the coffin and the confusion which followed.

Much Wilford regretted that New York was so far away, for a city coffin was more suitable, he thought, for a child of his, than the one which Dr. Grant had ordered.  But that was really of less consequence than the question where should the child be buried?  A costly monument at Greenwood was in accordance with his ideas, but all things indicated a contemplated burial there in the country churchyard, and sorely perplexed he called on Bell as the only Cameron at hand, to know what he should do.

“Do just as Katy prefers,” was Bell’s reply, as she led him to the coffin and pointed to the name:  “Little Genevra Cameron, aged nine months and twenty days.”

“What is it, Wilford—­what is the matter?” she asked, as her brother turned whiter than his child, and struck his hand upon his head as if a blow had fallen there.

Had “Genevra Lambert, aged twenty-two,” met his eye, he could not have been more startled than he was; but soon rallying, he said to Morris, who came near: 

“The child was baptized then?”

“Yes, baptized Genevra.  That was Katy’s choice, I understand,” Morris replied, and Wilford bowed his head, wishing the Genevra across the sea might know that his child bore her name.