"Have you seen the baby?" she asked Elizabeth, when the latter was brushing her hair for dinner. He had not been visible during the afternoon, but Angelica had thought of him incessantly. "Yes, Miss," Elizabeth answered. "Is he a pretty baby?" Angelica wanted to know. Elizabeth pursed up her lips with an air of reserve. "You don't think so?" Angelica said--she had seen the maid's face in the mirror before her. "What is he like?" "He's exactly like the bishop, Miss." Angelica broke into a broad smile at herself in the glass. "What! a little old man baby!" she exclaimed. "Yes, Miss--with a cold in his head," the maid said seriously. When she was dressed, Angelica went to make his acquaintance. On the way she discovered her particular friend, the bishop, going furtively in the same direction, and slipped her hand through his arm. "We'll go together," she said confidentially, taking it for granted that his errand was the same as her own. The nurse was undressing the child when they entered, and Edith sat watching her. She was already dressed for the evening, and looked worse in an elaborate toilet than she had done in her morning dress. A stranger would have found it hard to believe that only the year before she had been radiantly healthy and beautiful. The puzzled, pathetic expression again in her eyes as she watched the child. She had no smile for him, and uttered no baby words to him--nor had he a smile for her. He was old, old already, and exhausted with suffering, and as his gaze wandered from one to the other it was easy to believe that he was asking each dumbly why had he ever been born? "Is _that_ Edith's baby?" Angelica exclaimed in her astonishment and horror under her breath, slipping her hand from the bishop's arm. She had seen enough in one momentary glance, and she fled from the room. The bishop followed her. Mrs. Beale was there when they entered, standing behind her daughter's chair, but she did not look at her husband, nor he at her. For the first time in their married life, poor souls, they were afraid to meet each other's eyes. CHAPTER VII. Next day, in the afternoon, Mrs. Beale being otherwise engaged, Edith proposed that she and Angelica should go for a drive together. Edith was feeling better, and Angelica had recovered her equanimity. She suggested that they should drive toward Fountain Towers. Edith had not been on that road since her marriage, and when they passed the place where she and her mother had seen the young French girl lying insensible on the pathway with her baby beside her she was reminded of the incident, and described it to Angelica, adding: "I have so often longed to know what became of her."