"I have wanted to speak to you, darling," said Aline, very gravely. "It is more than a year now since your great trouble, and it is time to begin to live again. I know that life can never be the same for you again, but, after all, Freda, to your faith and mine, is not death only a brief absence from each other for those who love truly? And though your absence from him is a time of sorrow and pain, his absence from you is the happiness of God. Can't you bear it, knowing all is well with him?" Still Freda said not a word. "Then his little child--the little one mustn't be robbed of the joy of life that is a child's inheritance. When you have gone back to London, darling, don't give yourself up to sadness. Make the sacrifice of your grief for the child's sake, and God will surely bless it. Don't stay at home and fret. Go into society, where many people will want you. Go about freely, and gather any brightness you can from life. Happily, you are not poor. Even I can see that it would be harder to escape from grief if one were very poor." "Yes," said Freda, facing her for the first time, and with the oddest expression, "it would be harder if one were very poor." She spoke with a kind of bitter amusement. Then Aline went over and kissed her. "You won't think I am making little of your grief, you poor soul?" "I could never be so unjust to you, Aline." "There will be always Jim's mother to take care of you and love you, as well as your Mrs. Vincent. You and the child will be a good deal with Lady Hazeldine, I am sure?" She spoke wistfully. I guessed that she was thinking Freda too young and too pretty to be launched in London society alone. Freda's face became suddenly hard. "I shall see very little of Lady Hazeldine, Aline. Perhaps I shall not need to say more when I tell you that she suggested to me that I should give up my boy to her." Aline turned red and pale. "Give up Jacky!" she said, incredulously. "Yes, she had the insolence. But I will say no more. I did not mean to tell you, for she is Jim's mother; and now we will never talk about it again." Aline looked at her doubtfully. She did not know whether to speak or not; but just then Jacky burst turbulently into the room, carrying a very large kite. He was crying out in his childish tongue, which no one but his mother seemed to thoroughly understand, that Uncle Hugh was going to "fy" it for him. Freda caught him up suddenly to her breast, and held him so a moment. A red spot came into each cheek, and I guessed what she was thinking of. At least that horrid Lady Hazeldine met her deserts when she dared to make such a proposal to Freda; that was a comforting thing to think upon. CHAPTER VI. "HOW OFT HAS THE BANSHEE CRIED?" Now, I have been going back a good long way, so that I might make it clearly understood what we Brandons have been doing, and, with a long family like ours, it takes time to pick up the threads of all the histories.