The child lifted his flushed face. A smile danced up from his heart and broke in sunshine all over it. “Mamma, mamma!” he cried, leaping forward, his white arms extended, and the tears sparkling joyfully in his eyes, “you are not angry, you love me, darling mamma?” “Love you?” cried the widow, raining kisses upon his face. “Love you, darling. I love everything under the heavens, this day, and you, little one, best of all.” Don’t believe that, little Eddie. The warm blushes on her face, as she buries it in your curls, contradict every word of it. She loves you a great deal more than she did before, certainly; but her heart has grown large and rich since yesterday; and with all these caresses you are not the first there. Content yourself about that, little Eddie. In her walk that day, Mrs. Oakley met Catharine, who was rambling sadly through the grounds, which we have said adjoined each other, with Elsie Ford. The two women were very melancholy, and a look of continued pain lay upon them both. No wonder their lives were so sombre, so completely cast upon the shadowy side of existence. Elsie was very quiet, and her large black eyes wandered toward the little boy with sorrowful intensity; but she seemed afraid to touch him, muttering that he too would fly away and become nothing if she did. The boy looked at her wistfully, and once attempted to approach her, for those troubled eyes fascinated him. She waved him back, and gathering an over-ripe thistle, that grew in her path, the ghost of a flower that had been, she cast a sigh into its shadowy heart, and, lo! the whole disappeared. A few silvery gleams floated off toward sunset, and she held nothing but a dead, thorny stalk in her hand. “See, see; don’t come this way; everything I touch melts like that, into nothing, nothing, nothing.” The boy looked on and listened. Her voice was so sadly musical, it charmed him. He was very fearless, too, and moved toward her. She stepped backward, repelling him with her outstretched palms. “Don’t, don’t, you are so pretty. I won’t hurt _you_. Go away, or it will come to this.” She held up the dry, thorny stem of the thistle, and shook it warningly at the child. Repelled by this, he went away, following Mrs. Oakley and Catharine, who had walked forward, keeping the demented woman in sight. “Will you not rejoice that this terrible load is taken from my heart,” said the widow, chilled by the gravity of her companion. “The only trouble with me now is, that I could have doubted him.” “And is he equally happy?” inquired Catharine, in a low voice. “You are sure that he, too, is happy?” “I wish you could have seen him. It would be impossible to think otherwise. You know there was some doubt at first that his wife was dead; but it’s all cleared up now. His mother, with her dying breath, set it all right.” “And the knowledge that his wife was dead made him happy, you say?”