“You have been very ill for nearly two months,” she said, softening her voice.  “No one thought you could live.  Thank God! the crisis is over, but not the danger.”

“Two months!  Oh, mother!”

The slight flush that had come into Edith’s wan face faded out, and the pallor it had hidden for a few moments became deeper.  She shut her eyes and lay very still, but it was plain from the expression of her face that thought was busy.

“Not two whole months, mother?” she said, at length, in doubtful tones.  “Oh no! it cannot be.”

“It is just as I have said, Edith; and now, my dear child, as you value your life, keep quiet; all excitement is dangerous.”

But repression was impossible.  To Edith’s consciousness there was no lapse of time.  It seemed scarcely an hour since the birth of her baby and its removal from her sight.  The inflowing tide of mother-love, the pressure and yearning sweetness of which she had begun to feel when she first called for the baby they had not permitted to rest, even for an instant, on her bosom, was now flooding her heart.  Two months!  If that were so, what of the baby?  To be submissive was impossible.

Starting up half wildly, a vague terror in her face, she cried, piteously,

“Oh, mother, bring me my baby.  I shall die if you do not!”

“Your baby is in heaven,” said Mrs. Dinneford, softening her voice to a tone of tender regret.

Edith caught her breath, grew very white, and then, with a low, wailing cry that sent a shiver through Mrs. Dinneford’s heart, fell back, to all appearance dead.

The mother did not call for help, but sat by the bedside of her daughter, and waited for the issue of this new struggle between life and death.  There was no visible excitement, but her mouth was closely set and her cold blue eyes fixed in a kind of vacant stare.

Edith was Mrs. Dinneford’s only child, and she had loved her with the strong, selfish love of a worldly and ambitious woman.  In her own marriage she had not consulted her heart.  Mr. Dinneford’s social position and wealth were to her far more than his personal endowments.  She would have rejected him without a quicker pulse-beat if these had been all he had to offer.  He was disappointed, she was not.  Strong, self-asserting, yet politic, Mrs Dinneford managed her good husband about as she pleased in all external matters, and left him to the free enjoyment of his personal tastes, preferences and friendships.  The house they lived in, the furniture it contained, the style and equipage assumed by the family, were all of her choice, Mr. Dinneford giving merely a half-constrained or half-indifferent consent.  He had learned, by painful and sometimes. humiliating experience, that any contest with Mrs. Helen Dinneford upon which he might enter was sure to end in his defeat.