This was the doctor’s advice, which lifted a heavy load from Edith’s mind. Perhaps it was better to keep silent with regard to her marriage, she thought, especially as no one could be harmed by it; and gradually, as time passed on, she came to think of the past as a horrible dream, from which she had awakened to find the horror gone and the sunlight of content, if not of happiness, still shining around her. She, however, preferred her real name, and when she went to Mrs. Sinclair it was as Edith Lyle, and when that lady on hearing her mother mentioned as Mrs. Barrett asked how that was, Edith replied: “Mother has been married twice. Dr. Barrett was my stepfather.” Thus Mrs. Sinclair had no suspicion of the truth, and soon learned to regard Miss Lyle as more than a mere hired companion, and was never long easy when away from her. On the day of which I write, they had returned the previous night after an absence of several months, and, attracted by the freshness of the morning and the beauty of the grounds, Edith had left Mrs. Sinclair to read the pile of letters she found awaiting her, and stolen out to her favorite seat beneath the maples, where, through an opening in the distant trees of the park, she could catch glimpses of the Thames and the great city with its forest of spires and domes. And as she sat there in her tasteful cambric wrapper, with only a bit of blue ribbon at her throat and in her hair, no one who saw her would have dreamed of that tragedy of by-gone years in which she had been so greatly interested, and of which she was thinking that June morning, so like that day at Schuyler Hill when the brightness of her life had so suddenly been stricken out. Should she ever go there again,—ever see that grave which Ettie had promised to keep against her coming? Yes. She would go alone some time across the sea, and lay her face upon the grass which covered her lost love, and tell him of the child that died and whose grave she never saw. “But I will see it before I go,” she said; “I will find where they laid my little one, and it may be—” She did not finish the sentence, for just then the silvery stroke of a bell reached her ear and she knew she was wanted within. She found Mrs. Sinclair with many letters lying open before her, and one in her hand which she had evidently just read, and which seemed to disturb her. “I am sorry to call you when I know how fresh and bright it is out doors,” she said, as Edith came to her side, “but I find here a letter, written weeks ago, which must be answered at once. It is from my brother——” “Your brother!” Edith repeated, in some surprise, for that was the first allusion she had ever heard Mrs. Sinclair make to any near relatives.