How beautiful she was, and Edith paused a moment to look at her, wondering who she was, and then concluding from the hair that it must be Gertie Westbrooke, who had thrown her the bouquet. Entering the yard she went close to the grave, marvelling to find it in such perfect order, and feeling a sense of suffocation when she saw the vase she had given Ettie Armstrong full of freshly-gathered flowers, which seemed to speak to her so plainly from the dead. Who had done this, as if in welcome to her? Was there any one in Hampstead who suspected her identity? “Impossible,” she said to herself, as she sat down upon the iron chair which stood near the grave. “It is very strange, and this child here too asleep. What a beautiful face she has, and who is it she resembles?” Edith thought, as she marked the regular features, the transparent complexion, the long silken lashes and the glossy auburn hair of the unconscious child. How plump and pretty were the hands which lay, one on her lap, and the other on the green sward beside her, where it had fallen in the abandonment of sleep. How small, too, and perfectly formed were the little feet, and Edith wondered to see them encased in such dainty boots, just as she wondered at the whole appearance of the child who interested and fascinated her so much. “I wish she would awake. I’d like to talk with her,” she thought, and as if the wish had communicated itself to Gertie, the long lashes lifted slowly, disclosing a pair of eyes so bright and blue and lovely in their expression, that Edith half started, and thought, with a pang, of eyes she had seen years ago, but which now were closed forever and laid away beneath the turf at her feet. Gertie was quite awake now, and a sweet smile broke over her face and showed itself in her very eyes when she saw who was with her. “Oh, Mrs. Schuyler,” she said, advancing at once and without the least timidity toward the lady. “Oh, Mrs. Schuyler, it’s you. I was waiting for Godfrey, and went to sleep and had such a nice dream of mother, who was alive, I thought, and father too.” She was standing close to Edith, who, reaching out her hand, took Gertie’s in it, and forgetting that Mrs. Rogers was not the child’s own mother, said, in some surprise: “Your mother is not dead!” “Yes, she is,” Gertie replied. “She died when I was a little tiny girl, and father married again and Auntie Rogers took me away, and then father died, too, in Italy. Is not Mr. Godfrey coming to see the grave? he said he would yesterday.” She was more intent on Godfrey than on her parentage, and, at her mention of the grave, Edith asked, quickly: “What grave is Godfrey coming to see?”