She had been sent up by Rachel with a message to Mrs. Atherton, and was just in time to hear the commencement of Kitty's story. Any thing relating to the blind man was interesting to her, and so she listened, her large black eyes growing larger and blacker as the tale proceeded. It did NOT seem wholly new to her, that story of the drowning child--that cottage on the Rhine, and for a moment she heard a strain of low, rich music sung as a lullaby to some restless, wakeful child. Then the music, the cottage and the blue Rhine faded away. She could not recall them, but bound as by a spell she listened still, until the word Petrea dropped from Kitty's lips. Then she started suddenly. Surely, she'd heard that NAME before. Whose was it? When was it? Where was it? She could not tell, and she repeated it in a whisper so loud that it attracted Kitty's attention. "I shall catch it if she finds me listening," thought Edith, as she heard Kitty's remark, and in her haste to escape she forgot all about Petrea--all about the lullaby, and remembered nothing save the noble deed of the heroic Richard. "What a noble man he must be," she said, "to save that baby's life, and how she would pity him if she knew it made him blind. I wonder where she is. She must be most as big as I am now;" and if it were possible Edith's eyes grew brighter than their wont as she thought how had SHE been that Swedish child, she would go straight up to Collingwood and be the blind man's slave. She would read to him. She would see for him, and when he walked, she would lead him so carefully, removing all the ugly pegs from his boots, and watching to see that he did not stub his toes, as she was always doing in her headlong haste. "What a great good man he is," she kept repeating, while at the same time she felt an undefinable interest in the Swedish child, whom at that very moment, Grace Atherton was cursing in her heart as the cause of Richard's misfortune.