“No, it’s for you; keep it, Edith. You will want it some time, perhaps, to prove that you at least meant fair. I have written a few lines on it myself to show your innocence,” Mrs. Barrett said, and Edith put the letter mechanically into the pocket of her dressing-gown, while her mother continued: “Edith, before I begin, promise me one thing,—not your forgiveness,—I do not expect that,—but promise to do what I ask when my story is finished.” “How can I promise to do a thing unless I know it will be right?” Edith asked. “It is right,” Mrs. Barrett said; “I’d do it myself, only I am old and sick and going to die, and I did not think about it in England as I do here on my death-bed. But you are young; you have health and money and time. You can look it up, and you will, Edith. You _will_ when you know.” She spoke in a whisper, and Edith shook from head to foot, as she, too, said in a whisper: “Yes, mother, I will.” She did not know what she was pledged to do. She only knew that the terror of something horrible was upon her, benumbing her faculties, chilling her blood, and forcing her heart into her throat, which the iron hand held so firmly. It was something about _the child_, her little girl,—something about the way it died; and her brown eyes were black in the intensity of her feelings as she fastened them upon her mother, who, cowering beneath that gaze, cried out: “Look away, Edith; look somewhere else, and not at me, or I can never tell you.” But the eyes did not move, and shutting her own, the wretched woman began: “You remember I took your letter and did not give it to him, but told him what I pleased. Have you ever told him the truth?” Edith could not so much as articulate the one word _no_, and when, as she continued silent, her mother’s eyes unclosed and looked inquiringly at her, she only shook her head in token that she had not. “Then you must do it now! There’s no other way. You’ll need his co-operation,” Mrs. Barrett said, and Edith’s eyes were like flaming coals of fire as they confronted her so steadily. “Edith,” her mother went on, “do you remember the dreary room in Dorset Street, and the day it rained so hard?” Did she remember it? Ask rather if she ever could forget it, when, even now, after the lapse of so many years, she never heard the sound of rain against the windows or saw it falling in the street, that she did not recall that dreadful day of fog and rain and darkness when her child was taken from her. But she could not speak, and her mother continued: “I took the baby from you and carried her to the hospital, and then, when you insisted upon going after her, I went in your place, and when I came back I told you,—oh, Edith, don’t look at me, don’t curse me yet. I told you sh-she,—sh-she——” “You told me she was dead. Was _that_ a lie, too?”