Arthur was in New York, or I think he would have interfered when he saw how it affected Laura. I was sorry for the poor girl when I heard of it from Clarissa. I had lost a dear little baby and could sympathize with Laura. I think it makes a woman harder and less considerate not to have a husband or children of her own, and Clarissa had neither.” Mrs. Seymour forgot that her mother had both husband and children, and that therefore the thing which would excuse Clarissa could not be applied to her. But Magdalen did not forget it, and her fists were involuntarily clinched as if to smite the hard old woman who had torn Laura’s baby from her. “Does Alice know this?” she asked, and Mrs. Seymour replied, “She does not, of course. There could be no reason for harrowing up her feelings with a recital of the past, and I hardly know why I am telling _you_ the story so fully as I am.” “Never mind, go on;” Magdalen exclaimed eagerly, and Mrs. Seymour continued: “After the baby went away a kind of melancholy mood came over Laura and she would sit for hours and even days without speaking to any one; then she would have fits of crying, and again was irritable and quarrelsome, so that it was a trial to live with her. After two or three months she ceased to speak of her child, and when Arthur offered to take her to see it flew into so fierce a passion that he took the next train to New York and left her with mother. “It was a habit of his to go away from anything disagreeable, and most of his time was spent from home. He was always very fickle. To possess a thing was equivalent to his tiring of it, and even before Alice’s birth he was weary of his young wife; and so matters went on from bad to worse till Alice was nearly a year old, and Arthur began to talk of going abroad, while Laura proposed a separation, or that she should be allowed to go to Cincinnati while her husband was away. They would all be happier, she said; and his mother and Clarissa favored the plan. Arthur consented, and went with her himself to Cincinnati, and settled a yearly allowance upon her, and at her mother’s request bought three or four vacant lots which adjoined hers and were for sale, and which she wanted to hold so as to prevent shanties from being built upon them.” “And didn’t Mrs. Grey see her baby before she went?” Magdalen asked, and Mrs. Seymour replied: