d, with a tremor in her voice,

"Father, did you see my baby?"

Mr. Dinneford started at so unexpected a question, surprised and
disturbed. He did not reply, and Edith put the question again.

"No, my dear," he answered, with a hesitation of manner that was almost
painful.

After looking into his face steadily for some moments, Edith dropped her
eyes to the floor, and there was a constrained silence between them for
a good while.

"You never saw it?" she queried, again lifting her eyes to her father's
face. Her own was much paler than when she first put the question.

"Never."

"Why?" asked Edith.

She waited for a little while, and then said,

"Why don't you answer me, father?"

"It was never brought to me."

"Oh, father!"

"You were very ill, and a nurse was procured immediately."

"I was not too sick to see my baby," said Edith, with white, quivering
lips. "If they had laid it in my bosom as soon as it was born, I would
never have been so ill, and the baby would not have died. If--if--"

She held back what she was about saying, shutting her lips tightly. Her
face remained very pale and strangely agitated. Nothing more was then
said.

A day or two afterward, Edith asked her mother, with an abruptness that
sent the color to her face, "Where was my baby buried?"

"In our lot at Fairview," was replied, after a moment's pause.

Edith said no more, but on that very day, regardless of a heavy rain
that was falling, went out to the cemetery alone and searched in the
family lot for the little mound that covered her baby--searched, but did
not find it. She came back so changed in appearance that when her mother
saw her she exclaimed,

"Why, Edith! Are you sick?"

"I have been looking for my baby's grave and cannot find it," she
answered. "There is something wrong, mother. What was done with my baby?
I must know." And she caught her mother's wrists with both of her hands
in a tight grip, and sent searching glances down through her eyes.

"Your baby is dead," returned Mrs. Dinneford, speaking slowly and with
a hard deliberation. "As for its grave--well, if you will drag up the
miserable past, know that in my anger at your wretched _mesalliance_ I
rejected even the dead body of your miserable husband's child, and would
not even suffer it to lie in our family ground. You know how bitterly I
was disappointed, and I am not one of the kind that forgets or forgives
easily. I may have been wrong, but it is too