“Why, baby, darling, what is it?  Tell sister,” she said, hushing her own sobs.

The child continued to sob.  Her whole little frame was shaken convulsively.

“Tell sister,” whispered Maria.

“I’m cryin’ ’cause—­’cause—­” panted the child.

“Because what, darling?”

“Because you are crying, and—­and—­”

“And what?”

“’Cause I ’ain’t got anything to cry for.”

“Why, you precious darling!” said Maria.  She hugged the child close, and all at once a sense of peace and comfort came over her, even in the face of approaching disaster.  She sensed the love and pity which holds the world, through this little human key-note of it which had struck in her ears.

Chapter XVII

Harry Edgham’s disease proved to be one of those concerning which no physician can accurately calculate its duration or termination.  It had, as diseases often have, its periods of such utter quiescence that it seemed as if it had entirely disappeared.  It was not a year after Harry had received his indeterminate death sentence before he looked better than he had done for a long while.  The color came back to his cheeks, his expression regained its youthful joyfulness.  Everybody said that Harry Edgham was quite well again.  He had observed a certain diet and taken remedies; then, in the summer, he took, for the first time for years, an entire vacation of three weeks, and that had its effect for the better.

Maria began to be quite easy with regard to her father’s health.  It seemed to her that, since he looked so well, he must be well.  Her last winter at the Lowe Academy was entirely free from that worriment.  Then, too, Wollaston Lee had graduated and begun his college course, and she no longer had him constantly before her eyes, bringing to memory that bewildering, almost maddening experience of theirs that night in New York.  She was almost happy, in an odd, middle-aged sort of fashion, during her last term at the academy before her graduation.  She took great pride in her progress in her studies.  She was to graduate first of her class.  She did not even have to work very hard to accomplish it.  Maria had a mind of marvellous quickness of grasp.  Possibly her retentive powers were not entirely in proportion, but, at all events, she accomplished much with comparatively little labor.

Harry was very proud of her.  The evening before her graduation Ida had gone to New York to the theatre and Evelyn was in bed, and Maria dressed herself in her graduation gown, which was charming—­Ida had never neglected her, in respect to dress, at least—­and came down to show herself to her father.  He would not be able to be present at the graduation on account of an unusual press of business.  Maria came so lightly that she almost seemed to float into the room, with her fine white draperies trailing behind her and her knots of white ribbon fluttering, and stood before her father.