“Oh,” cried the poor soul, “what you have taken from me! How much you have robbed me of?” She paused a moment with her hands clasped, with the consciousness of wrong on her face. Then that sterner mood died away in the old sweet way of making the best of it, which Agnes remembered with a melting of her heart had always been Mary’s way. “Never mind,” she said. “Never mind. I know now, and you meant it all for the best.” CHAPTER XLIV. Mary sat by the bed in which Agnes lay for nearly half the night. She was so determined on this strange arrangement that her sister had to yield, and as long as the darkness lasted, which in July moves slowly, much more than in June, the conversation went on. Ford lay on the sofa in a distant corner and slept soundly, but neither of the ladies had any inclination to sleep. It distracted the thoughts of Agnes from the possible awful importance of this night in Mar’s life to tell Mar’s mother everything that had happened, dwelling as briefly as possible upon the illness which had separated Mary from her child, and endeavoring to blur over as best she could the blank which that illness had left behind in Mary’s mind. It was indeed a very broken story, in which a stranger wanting information would have seen the most serious gaps and deficiencies. But to Mary the interest of the details in which Agnes took refuge to avoid the more serious questions was so great that it was always possible to carry her past a dangerous point, and the murmurs of the two voices going on all through the night, low, breathed into each other’s ears, was more like the whisperings of two girls over their little secrets of love than the clearing up of what was almost a tragedy, the revelation of the strangest, troublous story. Mary herself was lost in a still vague and tremulous joy, all innocent and soft as the little garment that had been the happy cause of it, possessing as yet no complications, realizing nothing but that she had been proved to have the dearest of all possessions to a woman--a child, a baby, who to her thoughts was a baby still, and at present linked himself but dimly to any idea of further developments. To be told that he was Mar still gave little enlightenment to her mind, which did not know Mar. Something that could be wrapped still in that little film of innermost apparel--although it was at the same time something which could consciously respond to her affection, reflect his father’s image as Agnes said he did--something that was at once a loving human creature and an infant entirely her own. This was Mary’s conception of the child whom she had discovered as if it had been a jewel that was lost. She was not shaken by her discovery as had been feared. She took it sweetly, quietly, as was natural to her gentle soul. Happily it had come without any harsh discovery, in the gentlest way, and as yet there seemed nothing but happiness in the lifting of the veil, the opening up of the old life.