While she was touring in the country she had given up reading without being aware that she had done so. She had once bought a copy of the _Family Herald_, hoping that it would help away the time on the long railway journey, but having herself come into a life of passion, energy and infinite variety, she could not follow with any interest the story of three young ladies in reduced circumstances who had started a dressmaking business and who were destined clearly to marry the men they loved and who loved them and who would continue to love them long after the silver threads had appeared among the gold. But now in the long lonely days spent with her baby in the lodging (Dick went away early in the morning and sometimes did not return till twelve o'clock at night), a story in a copy of _The Family Herald_ lent to her by the landlady, on the whole a very kind and patient soul, took hold of Kate's imagination, and when she raised her eyes a tear of joy fell upon the page, and in the effusion of these sensations she would take her little girl and press it almost wildly to her breast. Before leaving, the nurse had given Kate many directions. The baby was to have its bath in the morning; to be kept thoroughly clean, and to be given the bottle at certain times during the day and night. Kate was devoted to her child, but the attention she gave it was unsustained, a desultory attention. Sometimes she put too much water in the milk, sometimes too little. The christening had awakened in her many forgotten emotions, and now that she was an honest married woman, she did not see why she should not resume her old church-going ways. The story she was reading was full of allusions to the vanity of this world and the durability of the next; and her feet on the fender, penetrated with the dreamy warmth of the fire, she abandoned herself to the seduction of her reveries. Everything conspired against her. Being still very weak the doctor had ordered her to keep up her strength with stimulants; a table-spoonful of brandy and water taken now and then was what was required. This was the ordinance, but the drinks in the dressing-rooms had taught her the comforts of such medicines, and during the day several glasses were consumed. Without getting absolutely drunk, she rapidly sank into sensations of numbness, in which all distinctions were blurred, and thoughts trickled and slipped away like the soothing singing of a brook. It was like an amorous tickling, and as her dreams balanced between a tender declaration of love and the austere language of the Testament, the crying of the sick child was unheeded.