Edith had never voluntarily mentioned her mother in Gertie’s hearing, and when the latter spoke of her, as she sometimes did, she turned the conversation at once into another channel. This Gertie now remembered, and when she added to it the few words Mrs. Barrett had inadvertently let fall about her daughter’s blaming her, she felt sure there was some misunderstanding between mother and daughter; and while she stood firmly by Edith, as the one probably least in fault, she felt a great pity for the tired, worn woman, whose face was so much paler and thinner than when she last saw it, and she resolved to do the best for her she could. “Oh, Mrs. Schuyler,” she said, meeting the lady at the foot of the stairs, and detaining her there while she spoke. “Wait a moment, please, before you go up. I have some good news for you, real good, too. And you will be so glad. I was, and she is nothing to me either. Guess who has come?” Edith could not guess, though a thrill ran through her nerves, and without the slightest reason for it she felt the touch of the iron fingers at her throat, and her voice was a whisper as she asked: “Who is it, Gertie?” “_Your mother_, and she is so tired and pale, and is trembling all over to see you,” Gertie replied, surer than ever, from the expression of Edith’s face, that there was something unpleasant between them. “My mother! My mother here, in this house,” Edith said, and her voice, which she had recovered, reached to the upper hall where her mother stood, hearing the words and feeling them like so many stabs, for she knew now she was not welcome. Edith was not glad, though her feelings were less for herself than for her husband. Try as she might she had never been able quite to forgive her mother for the false position in which her falsehood had placed her, and she felt she could never trust her again. Still she was her mother, and nothing could undo that, and she was there in her house, unasked, it is true, but as a mother, she had, perhaps, a right to come; or would have had, if the husband had not expressed himself so decidedly against it; and that was where Edith felt most keenly. What would Col. Schuyler say? Would he blame her? And would the result be estrangement and coldness between them? That something would come of it she was sure, and as if she already felt the shadow of the _something_ which would result from that visit of her mother’s, and threaten both her life and reason, she stood a moment unable to move while Gertie stared at her amazed, and the mother still stood waiting in the hall above. Recovering herself at last she went slowly up the stairs, and on toward her own room, where she naturally expected to find her visitor. But Mrs. Barrett was at the other end of the hall, and called to her: “Here, Edith; here I am; here’s your poor old mother.”