anything; I heard strange noises in my ears--sometimes I thought I was lying in some danger, and something from which I could not escape was hurrying upon me to crush me to atoms; and then again I was at Cottiswoode--yet always here, always conscious of Baby and of Alice. Hitherto the many and great agitations to which I had been subject, or which I had brought upon myself, had done me no harm. As safely as though I had been living the most placid life had this great trial been surmounted; but it was different now. The cause was different; always before my husband had been but too anxious to change my mind towards him himself. It was a new and dreadful experience, this leaving me alone; and I was exhausted and weak, though I had not expected it; the long arrears of past suffering came back upon me now. I suppose I must have been very ill for a few hours. I cannot tell; I remember only a vague and feverish wretchedness, an aching, longing desire to complain to some one, and a burning consciousness that I had no one on earth to complain to; I saw visions, too, in my illness; unhappy momentary dreams; glimpses of my husband rejoicing with strangers; placing my baby in the arms of another; always deserting and forsaking me. My heart was shocked and wounded; it was not an ordinary stroke, but a blow unexpected, which struck beyond all my poor defences, and laid me prostrate. Yet I could not have been long thus, for when I came to myself it was still the twilight of the same day. The room was darkened, and the candle burned faintly on the table at the extreme end of the little apartment, and there was a faint perfume in the room of some essence they had been using for me. It was June, a soft mild summer night, yet a little fire was burning in the grate, for baby's sake, and by it sat the woman who had come to assist Alice, holding my child in her lap. The first sign I perceived in myself of recovery was the indignant start with which I observed that this woman, I suppose overcome by the heat and doing nothing, was nodding and dozing at her post. I was not aware at the moment of having had anything the matter with me. I looked up with a startled, indignant glance at Alice, who was bending over me anxiously. "Bring him to me, Alice," I cried eagerly; "or, if I must not have my baby, do you keep him at least. She is a stranger; she does not care for him. Look, look, she has fallen asleep!" I saw the woman start and open her eyes with a guilty look as I spoke, and Alice said, "Yes, darling, yes," as she bent over me and continued bathing my forehead. I put away her hand impatiently. "Take him yourself, Alice, or bring him to me," I cried again. I had a shuddering which I could not restrain at my seeing him in the stranger's arms. "Do what she tells you," said the doctor, who was standing by the side of Alice, in a low tone of authority; "she is better, bring the child to her, she will be well now, if she can sleep."