At the mention of the peculiar birthmark on her child, Edith moaned faintly, and thought of the white rose with the blood stain in the centre, and the awful day when it was brought back to her, and she had laid it next her breaking heart. There was a blood-red spot over baby’s heart, and Edith knew how it came there, and shuddered and grew sick as she remembered it, and held tighter to the little one whom her mother would wrest from her. At last, wearied with the controversy which was exciting her daughter so much, Mrs. Fordham seemed to give up the contest, but it was only seeming. She was one who never gave up, and what she could not accomplish by fair means she was not too scrupulous to attain by foul. Baby must go. It was something in her way, and must be sacrificed; so, when the hour came round for her daughter’s medicine, she mixed with it one of the sedative powders which Edith had taken for wakefulness when her illness was at the worst. As it had been successful then so it was now, and she ere long fell into a heavy sleep, which Mrs. Fordham knew from experience would last for several hours. This was her time for action, and going to the bed she stooped to take the child from the arms which held it so fast. Even in her sleep Edith must have had a dim consciousness of the threatened danger, for she held firmly to the little one, while her white lips moaned: “No, she is mine; you cannot have her.” But for this Mrs. Fordham did not hesitate, and with a firm hand she carefully unclasped the clinging arms and lifted the child from the bed. Had it been a gentleman’s offspring, and Edith the mistress of some luxurious home, she might have felt some love and tenderness for the little creature, which, roused from its sleep, opened its blue eyes and looked into her face. But it was lowly born, a descendant of the Lyles, who lived in obscurity among the heather hills of Alnwick, and she steeled her heart against it, and never faltered in her purpose, even when the pretty lips parted and gave forth a sound, which made Edith start and half turn upon her pillow as if about to waken. But the sedative was good, and the young girl slept on, while her mother robed the little one in its best attire, and wrote upon a bit of paper which she pinned upon its bosom: “Her name is Heloise, and she is not a child of shame, but of an imprudent marriage, and inherits from her mother, who is a lady, some of the best blood in England.” “That will save her from a life of servitude; the high bloods always take such children as these,” she said, “and it will be much better so than a drag on us.”