Her manner had grown calmer; and she spoke with such touching tenderness that tears came to Phillis's eyes. But Mrs. Cheyne never once looked at the girl; she lingered by the table a moment, adjusting a leaf here and a bud there in the bouquets, and then she opened an inner door leading to the night-nursery. Here the associations were still more harrowing. The cots stood side by side under a muslin canopy, with an alabaster angel between them; the little night-dresses lay folded on the pillows; on each quilt were the scarlet dressing-gown and the pair of tiny slippers; the clothes were piled neatly on two chairs,--a boy's velvet tunic on one, a girl's white frock, a little limp and discolored, hung over the rails of the other. "Everything just the same," murmured the poor mother. "Look here, my dear,"--with a faint smile--"these are Bertie's slippers: there is the hole he kicked in them when he was in his tempers, for my boy had the Cheyne temper. He was Herbert's image,--his very image." She sighed, paused, and went on: "Every night I come and sit beside their beds, and then the darlings come to me. I can see their faces--oh, so plainly!--and hear their voices. 'Good-night, dear mamma!' they seem to say to me, only Bertie's voice is always the louder." Her manner was becoming a little excited again; only Phillis took her hand and pressed it gently, and the touch seemed to soothe her like magic. "I am so glad you come here every night," she said, in her sweet, serious voice, from which every trace of fear had gone. "I think that a beautiful idea, to come and say your prayers beside one of these little beds." "To say my prayers!--I pray beside my darlings' beds!" exclaimed Mrs. Cheyne, in a startled voice. "Oh no! I never do that. God would not hear such prayers as mine,--never--never!" "Dear Mrs. Cheyne, why not?" She moved restlessly away at the question, and tried to disengage herself from Phillis's firm grasp. "The Divine Father hears all prayers," whispered the girl. "All?--but not mine,--not mine, or I should not be sitting here alone. Do you know my husband left me in anger,--that his last words to me were the bitterest he ever spoke? 'Good-by, Magdalene: you have made my life so wretched that I do not care if I never live to set foot in this house again!' And that to me,--his wedded wife, and the mother of his children,--who loved him so. Oh, Herbert! Herbert!" and, covering her face, the unhappy woman suddenly burst into a passion of tears. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.