t disturbance. "Hush!" she said, "is
he waking?"--looking towards the cradle. But as the baby made no further
sound, she too, returned to her sewing; and they sat bending their heads
over their work round the table, and continued their talk. The room was
very comfortable, bright, and warm, as Lady Mary had liked all her rooms
to be. The warm firelight danced upon the walls; the women talked in
cheerful tones. She stood outside their circle, and looked at them with a
wistful face. Their notice would have been more sweet to her, as she
stood in that great humiliation, than in other times the look of a queen.

"But what is the matter with baby?" the mother said, rising hastily.

It was with no servile intention of securing a look from that little
prince of life that she who was not of this world had stepped aside
forlorn, and looked at him in his cradle. Though she was not of this
world, she was still a woman, and had nursed her children in her arms.
She bent over the infant by the soft impulse of nature, tenderly, with no
interested thought. But the child saw her; was it possible? He turned his
head towards her, and flickered his baby hands, and cooed with that
indescribable voice that goes to every woman's heart. Lady Mary felt such
a thrill of pleasure go through her, as no incident had given her for
long years. She put out her arms to him as his mother snatched him from
his little bed; and he, which was more wonderful, stretched towards her
in his innocence, turning away from them all.

"He wants to go to some one," cried the mother. "Oh look, look, for God's
sake! Who is there that the child sees?"

"There's no one there,--not a soul. Now dearie, dearie, be reasonable.
You can see for yourself there's not a creature," said the grandmother.

"Oh, my baby, my baby! He sees something we can't see," the young woman
cried. "Something has happened to his father, or he's going to be taken
from me!" she said, holding the child to her in a sudden passion. The
other women rushed to her to console her,--the mother with reason, and
Jervis with poetry. "It's the angels whispering, like the song says." Oh,
the pang that was in the heart of the other whom they could not hear! She
stood wondering how it could be,--wondering with an amazement beyond
words, how all that was in her heart, the love and the pain, and the
sweetness and bitterness, could all be hidden,--all hidden by that air in
which the women stood so clear! She held o