"Oh, well," he answered, coolly, "just as you like, you know. But I should think you'd better--for the child's sake, at least." "It isn't true. I don't believe it," she said, piteously. "Ask the doctor, then;" and he sauntered out, smiling, and perhaps not dreaming that she would. But "for the child's sake" had alarmed Ideala, and she sent for the doctor. It was hours before he could come to her, and, in the meantime, not knowing that her state of mind would affect the child, she had fidgeted and fretted herself into a fever, and when the doctor saw her, he could only confirm her husband's verdict. "I am afraid you must give up nursing," he said. "You are in such a nervous state it will do the child harm. But he's such a fine fellow! He'll thrive all right--you needn't be frightened." Ideala said nothing, but she sat in her own room night after night for a week, and heard the child crying for her, and could not go to him-- and even when he did not cry she fancied she heard him still. I think as the milk slowly and painfully left her, her last spark of affection for her husband dried up too. The child died of diphtheria some time afterwards, and in a little while, Ideala, who was then in her twenty-sixth year, returned to her old pursuits, and no one ever knew what she felt about it: For, it is with feelings as with waters-- The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb! CHAPTER XI. My widowed sister, Claudia, was one of Ideala's most intimate friends. She was a good deal older than Ideala, whom she loved as a mother loves a naughty child, for ever finding fault with her, but ready to be up in arms in a moment if any one else ventured to do likewise. She was inclined to quarrel with me because, although I never doubted Ideala's truth and earnestness (no one could), knowing her weak point, I feared for her. I thought if all the passion in her were ever focussed on one object she would do something extravagant--a prediction which Claudia, with good intent, rashly repeated to her once. Claudia was mistress of my house, and she and I had agreed from the first that, whatever happened, we would watch over Ideala and befriend her.