“Forgotten what?”

“You were very ill after your baby was born; no one thought you could live; you were ill for a long time.  And the baby—­”

“What of the baby, mother?” asked Edith, beginning to tremble violently.  Her mother, perceiving her agitation, held back the word that was on her lips.

“What of the baby, mother?” Edith repeated the question.

“It died,” said Mrs. Dinneford, turning partly away.  She could not look at her child and utter this cruel falsehood.

“Dead!  Oh, mother, don’t say that!  The baby can’t be dead!”

A swift flash of suspicion came into her eyes.

“I have said it, my child,” was the almost stern response of Mrs. Dinneford.  “The baby is dead.”

A weight seemed to fall on Edith.  She bent forward, crouching down until her elbows rested on her knees and her hands supported her head.  Thus she sat, rocking her body with a slight motion.  Mrs. Dinneford watched her without speaking.

“And what of George?” asked Edith, checking her nervous movement at last.

Her mother did not reply.  Edith waited a moment, and then lifted herself erect.

“What of George?” she demanded.

“My poor child!” exclaimed Mrs. Dinneford, with a gush of genuine pity, putting her arms about Edith and drawing her head against her bosom.  “It is more than you have strength to bear.”

“You must tell me,” the daughter said, disengaging herself.  “I have asked for my husband.”

“Hush!  You must not utter that word again;” and Mrs. Dinneford put her fingers on Edith’s lips.  “The wretched man you once called by that name is a disgraced criminal.  It is better that you know the worst.”

When Mr. Dinneford came home, instead of the quiet, happy child he had left in the morning, he found a sad, almost broken-hearted woman, refusing to be comforted.  The wonder was that under the shock of this terrible awakening, reason had not been again and hopelessly dethroned.

After a period of intense suffering, pain seemed to deaden sensibility.  She grew calm and passive.  And now Mrs. Dinneford set herself to the completion of the work she had begun.  She had compassed the ruin of Granger in order to make a divorce possible; she had cast the baby adrift that no sign of the social disgrace might remain as an impediment to her first ambition.  She would yet see her daughter in the position to which she had from the beginning resolved to lift her, cost what it might.  But the task was not to be an easy one.

After a period of intense suffering, as we have said, Edith grew calm and passive.  But she was never at ease with her mother, and seemed to be afraid of her.  To her father she was tender and confiding.  Mrs. Dinneford soon saw that if Edith’s consent to a divorce from her husband was to be obtained, it must come through her father’s influence; for if she but hinted at the subject, it was met with a flash of almost indignant rejection.  So her first work was to bring her husband over to her side.  This was not difficult, for Mr. Dinneford felt the disgrace of having for a son-in-law a condemned criminal, who was only saved from the State’s prison by insanity.  An insane criminal was not worthy to hold the relation of husband to his pure and lovely child.