There was a sound in Mrs. Sinclair’s room, and Edith hastened to remove her hat and scarf so as to be in readiness for the lady when she was needed, and what Norah had said to her of her cousin and the child was scarcely heeded, except, indeed, the name, Gertie Westbrooke, which struck her as very pretty, and twice that day she caught herself repeating it, while in her dreams that night it seemed constantly in her mind; and when at an early hour she woke from a troubled sleep, her chamber was full of the faint echoes of the name of the little girl who was to occupy her old room and bed in Caledonia Street. CHAPTER IX. GODFREY SCHUYLER. It was the day after Edith’s visit to her mother, and taking advantage of the hour when Mrs. Sinclair took her after-lunch nap, she went out with her book into the grounds, and strolled on until she came to a clump of trees at the farthest extremity of the park, where was a little rustic chair. This had always been her favorite resort, the place she sought when she wished to be alone, and here she sat down, ostensibly to read, but really to think,—not so much of the past as of the future. That her kind, indulgent mistress, who had been an invalid for so many years, was failing fast, was very apparent to her experienced eyes, and only that morning she had observed that the handkerchief Mrs. Sinclair held to her lips after a paroxysm of coughing had a faint coloring of blood upon it. “And where shall I find a home like this when she is gone?” Edith asked herself, sadly. “I might go back to mother and help her with her sewing, and take Kitty’s place,” she said, shuddering a little as she thought of the small house in Caledonia Street, so different from the pleasant home which had been hers for more than two years. She might go out as a governess again, but when she remembered the insult which she had twice received when a governess, once from the young man of the house, who looked upon her as lawful prey, and once from the master, a brutal wretch who could not withstand her beauty, she thought any life preferable to that. Her face and manner were both against her, and if Mrs. Sinclair died, her only safety was in her mother’s house. “Yes, that will be the end of it,” she said, a little bitterly, as she remembered all her mother had hoped for her and what she had once hoped for herself.