couch, and took hold of her hand. She resumed,
glancing down at me:

Not but what she loved her baby. She
loved it dearly—but with a poisoned mind. I saw
how it all was, when the handsome gentleman
I had once liked so much, coming to stay again
with that family in the neighbourhood, rode over
so often to call upon my master, but stayed so
long with my lady in the drawin'-room.

It might have been only fancy, but I thought
him not nearly so handsome as he was.

Well. He came and went in the neighbourhood
for some time, and my lady grew sadder
and sadder, and her husband saw nothing, or
said nothing, all the while, but appeared to grow
more busy and quiet-like every day. Except
for the baby, then a year old, and able to talk a
little, lispingly, her life was very lonely. Sometimes,
for days, she would scarcely leave the
nursery. At others, she seemed to enter it
with a faltering step, and a tremble runnin'
through her figure, and then, with a frightened
face kissing the little innocent, she would hasten
away to hide the tears in her eyes, and the aching
at her heart.

Though I never saw them together—I mean,
my lady and the handsome gentleman—about
this time, I knew by instinct (for I loved her,
and had done from a child), that they sometimes
met. At last I knew it for certain, and I never
was so unhappy in my whole life! No, not
even when I had a great sorrow of my own.

It was a beautiful autumn evening. My
master was gone from home to a meeting of
some society connected with what he was always
reading about, and there was no soul about the
house, as far as I knew, except the servants and
my mistress, who was, I thought, in the drawin'-
room. Having a very bad headache, after I had
put my baby to bed and left the housemaid in
the nursery to watch it, I went out to get a
breath of air in the kitchen garden and about the
back ways behind the shrubberies. Everything
was very still, except that a soft breeze went
soughing and whispering through the great fir
plantations, and I, quite alone, and feeling my
head grow lighter and better as I walked, kept
listenin' to the sound and thinkin', I remember,
at the time, what a nice sound it would be to
send a baby to sleep with. As I listened,
presently I heard voices. At first they were hardly
louder than the fir whispers, but, gradually, I
heard my own dear lady's voice answer some low
words, too low for me to catch, aloud, in a tone
of agony:

"Oh no!" she cried; " Gerald, do not tempt
me!—for Heaven's sake do not tempt me to leave
my little child!" Her voice, though not a high
one, rang through the stillness with such an echo
that I trembled lest any one should hear it beside
myself. He seemed to hush her, and to try to
soothe her, as I gathered from the few words I
could overhear.

I knew it was the handsome gentleman, for
Gerald was his name, and oh, what a horror I felt
of him!

I had never played the listener on purpose before
in my life, but now I was determined to hear all I
could, and I stood as still as death almost, in my
place behind the shrubberies; for was I not her
maid when she was little more than a child?—
didn't she love me, and might I not try to save
her? Besides, I was her own baby's nurse.
Anyhow, I stopped.

I heard but very little more except just at the
last. They appeared about to part, and then, in
his voice, I heard these words: " To-morrow
night, then, my own, whether you come or not,
at eleven o'clock I shall be here." And, after
that, only the sound of stealthy footsteps
carefully going over the fallen leaves, and of a low
weeping that broke out between whiles when the
footsteps were gone.

I waited, perhaps, half an hour, perhaps not
quite so long. I hardly knew, I was in such a
tremor. Then I went in by the kitchen passage
door, and up the back staircase round to my
darling's nursery, in the front of the house, next
to my lady's dressin'-room. There was a door
through it into the nursery, and, in about an
hour or so, I heard my mistress come up there,
and, as it was bedtime, I knocked and went in
to help her to undress as I was always used
to do.

She was sitting before her glass, washing her
face with some rose-water, and she started as I
opened the door. She didn't need to try and
deceive me, poor thing, into thinking that she
hadn't been crying!

"How you startled me, nurse!" she said.

I answered, " But I knocked, ma'am—didn't
you hear me knock?"

"I suppose I was not thinking about you,
Mary," she said, hurriedly.

I said, " I don't think you are in spirits this
evening, ma'am. You'll feel it lonesome
tonight without master. Shall I leave the doors
open through to the nursery, so as you can hear
me and the baby?"

I wanted her to think about the baby. But
she said, sorrowfully,

"No, thank you, Mary. I'm used to being
lonely."

I still wanted her to think about the baby;
and, pretending that I heard it stirring, I went
back through the open door into the nursery for
a moment, and after pretending to soothe it,
called her to look at it.

"O dear, ma'am," I said, " do come and look
at the dear child. I don't know that ever I saw
it look so pretty in its innocent sleep!"

She came in her white dressing-gown, which
she had loosely put on, but her face, that had
flushed to a deep red as she first looked at the
child, grew almost whiter than her gown, while
she stood silent by the little bed.

"Dear me, ma'am," I said, " what is so
innocent and beautiful to look at as a little
sleeping babe! I can't think how any one can
ever hurt a child! I do think, if I was to hurt
a baby through cruelty or passion, I couldn't
never say my prayers again hardly."

My lady stooped over the child until her long