“You may say I am selfish! I am,” she said, wistfully, to me afterwards. “But if it had been a girl, and you had loved her like my father loved me, what room would there have been in your heart for me?” _June —._ The little one is a week old to-day. It is very sweet to see mother and son together. I could sit and look at them by the hour. But “Life is real, life is earnest!” as the great author of that incomparable “Psalm of Life” says; and all the more that the boy has come upon the scene, I must be “up and doing, with a heart for any fate!” Any fate! what fate can I fear, with those two precious ones to love and work for? _July —._ Can I, this wretched, hopeless wreck, groping in a thick darkness, where not the faintest gleam of hope tells me what I am, where I am, how I am to bear my life—can I be the _fool_ who wrote that last entry? Fool, fool! I boasted of a to-morrow. If ever any eyes see this—man or woman,—I solemnly warn you, never, NEVER, whatever happens, however you may have been blessed, look upon to-morrow with anything approaching to the feeling (was it confidence or presumption?) with which I wrote those last words. It was all sunshine that day; next day the storm was down upon me with a vengeance. My darling was lying on the sofa (it was a sultry afternoon) by the window. We were looking over a map together, discussing where we should all go for change of air as soon as she might travel, when suddenly she asked me “if I would mind shutting the window.” “I think the wind must have changed,” she said, pulling her little shawl together over her shoulders; “I feel quite cold.” She could not possibly have had a chill; the air itself was like that which comes from a heated oven. However, I closed the window. I had hardly done so when she was seized with shivering. I called Nurse, who is a kind, but highly-experienced woman. I called her in fear. I saw her look swiftly at Lilia, then at me. _Then I knew._ We both pretended to Lilia to think nothing of the rigours which shook her and turned her lips blue over her chattering teeth; but I stole my opportunity, rushed downstairs, sent off a telegram to Dr. Taylor, despatched a messenger for the Mervyns. I could not face this alone: I turned coward. I “groaned in my anguish, and the thorn fastened in me.” And when I went back—the pity of it—Nurse struggling to lift the pale, suffering darling into bed, and baby crying piteously in the next room; while _she_ said piteously to me, “He might be quiet till I get warm, mightn’t he?” Poor infant! if he were quiet till his mother got warm, he would never cry again. I sent Nurse to quiet him, and waited on her myself. I did everything, I hazarded everything I dared, to bring about a reaction. But presently she complained of her chest.