urances that she with an only half-feigned, pretty
reluctance gave--but that their agreeable dalliance was cut short by a
sufficiently alarming interruption.

She did not absolutely dislike him? Liked him--very much, even? That
was well. Years hence, if he waited patiently--and he would try, he
would try to wait--she might even get to love him a little? Was that
asking too much? Well, not just yet, then; he would wait. But he was
not to go away unhappy? Not utterly discouraged? He need not, for what
had taken place between them, debar himself entirely of the delight of
her society, he might--?

It was at that instant of the major's soft-voiced pleading and of the
widow's low, monosyllabic replies, that a voice from out the plantation
on their left smote sharply upon their ears. It called affrightedly
upon Mrs Eddington's name.

The mother, whose mother-love was, and would always be, the strongest
passion of her life, fled into the wood. Following the direction of the
voice, in two minutes she came upon the kneeling form of the nurse; and
the nurse's white and terrified face looked up at her across the
unconscious form of the little child.

"I found her so," the woman got out through chattering teeth. "I sat
reading, and she ran to the other side of the tree. She was talking to
me, and then she didn't talk, and I went round and found--this!"

With shaking fingers the mother tore asunder the broad muslin strings
of the hat upon which the child lay, rent open the dainty dress at the
throat--"Look at mother! Milly! Milly! Look at mother!" she called
wildly, impatiently, fiercely even.

As if in answer to the passionate appeal, the child's dark lashes
stirred for a moment on the transparent cheek; were still; stirred
again; then the dark eyes, so like the dark eyes of the dead father,
opened upon the mother's face.

"Only fainted," the gentleman who had been proposing to officiate as
Milly's stepfather said. He was much relieved that the scene, at which
he had looked on awkwardly enough, was over. That for a three-year-old
child to faint was an unusual, an alarming occurrence, he did not, of
course, understand. Certainly, if Mrs Eddington thought it necessary,
he would go for the doctor. He could probably bring him quicker than a
groom. Should he carry the little Milly home first?

But the mother must carry Milly herself. No; nurse should certainly not
touch her. Never again should nurse, who had let the child for a