Meanwhile to poor Mary there came but little change. She did not recover as the doctor had promised. She had nothing that could be called a recovery at all. She kept her bed because apparently she had no desire to get up. And sometimes she would hold long conversations about baby clothes and the like with the nurse, rationally enough, as if her mind was able to occupy itself with ordinary duties. Sometimes even she would allow the baby to be brought to her, and cry over it. “Poor little thing!” she would say, “if that is to be its fate; oh, it is not the little thing’s fault. I might be to blame, but it couldn’t be to blame. Oh, poor little thing. I’ll not cry out if you kill me, poor baby. It will not be you, but dreadful, dreadful fate.” “Oh, my lady, don’t talk like that. The child will grow up to be your comfort and joy.” “Listen, then,” said Mary, “it’s only to you I will tell the secret,” and she would put her lips to the woman’s ear and whisper that eager, anxious, busy whisper that meant nothing. And when this secret communication was completed, Mary added in her ordinary voice, “So you see we cannot help it, neither he nor I. Oh to think he should have been born only for this, and to put everything wrong. Take it away, take it away,” she would cry suddenly, her voice rising to a scream, thrusting the poor child into the nurse’s arms. And then she would draw the nurse to her and whisper again, “Tell him, tell him,” she said: but the whisper was never intelligible, and the look which the poor old lord gave her made the unfortunate nurse lose her head altogether. “Oh, my lord!” the woman said, and Mary nodded her head with satisfaction as if everything was being explained. Lord Frogmore would turn away more wretched than ever, unable to elicit a word or hardly a look which reminded him of her former self, and went downstairs to pace up and down the library, up and down, paying no attention to anything. Never was there a more sad house. Agnes, who remained with her sister, though Mary took no notice of her, would steal down after those dreadful interviews to comfort the poor old gentleman. “She will not speak to me at all,” said Agnes, weeping. “She thinks I am a stranger. I don’t think she knows me.” “What is she always whispering?” said the old lord. “There must be something in that. The nurse ought to make out what it is. Perhaps she wants something. Perhaps we might find some way to work if we could but know what that whisper was? I don’t think you should stand upon a point of honor, but try--try to understand what she says.” “Oh, dear Lord Frogmore,” cried Agnes with tears in her eyes. “It is nothing. I don’t think she says words at all.”