“Look here,” interposed Jane Kelly. “This sort of humbug can’t go on any longer. Doctor, you may take it on yourself to disobey an order from headquarters, but I won’t. This woman is authorized to take this very child, it being an orphan,—and this child she is going to have, if all the women in the ward go into hysterics.” Here Mrs. Dillon interfered. “Let the poor thing be, doctor; one day can do no harm. If the child is to be put out, give me a chance; no own mother ever took such care of it as I will.” Here the young woman started up in bed. “Yes! yes! let her have it—I won’t say one word, so long as I know it is with her.” The doctor looked at Jane. “Why not?” “Why not? because this woman has her order, and is going to take that identical child along with her, and no shirking.” The young man gave way. He really had no authority to interfere. So with absolute violence Jane forced the babe from those clinging arms, and tore it away, leaving that poor creature in an agony of grief. Again Mary Margaret sat down by the bed, and made an effort to console the grief she had failed to avert, but she was only answered by heart-broken sobs, and her protégé fell into a trembling fit that shook the bed. After a while she seemed more quiet. Then Mary Margaret took up her child sorrowfully, and went away crying, as if she herself had been bereaved. That night the poor creature was taken dangerously ill, and for weeks and weeks scarcely knew a soul that spoke to her. CHAPTER XVII. WHERE COULD SHE GO? A young girl, pale and fragile almost as a shadow, came through the side-gate of Bellevue. She hesitated a moment, looked up and down the street, and then turning toward the water, moved languidly to an angle of the wharf, and placing a little bundle at her feet, glanced drearily down upon the tide as it rushed in and out against the timbers. It was near sunset, and the March winds, that blew raw and cold from the river, seemed to chill her through and through, for her sweet, pale features became pinched, while she sat there lost in gloomy thought, and a tinge of purple crept around her mouth, which trembled visibly either from chilliness or coming tears. Her eyes seemed fascinated by the water, so dark and turbid that it appeared to hold some mysterious secret of repose in its depths; and once or twice she murmured, “Why not? why not?” in a voice of the most touching misery. Then she relapsed into silence again, broken only by a shiver when the wind rushed sharply over her. “Where can I go?” she exclaimed at last, her voice breaking forth in a cry of anguish. “To _his_ mother—she will turn me away with insults, as she did before. To my aunt?” She uttered the name with a shudder, and shrunk down beneath her shawl, as if some blow had been threatened, and relapsed into dreary silence again.