"It was a great trouble to me, of course, dear," May continued; and she raised herself a little, to spread her handsome dress, so that it should fall in graceful folds. "I used to cry my eyes out, and I don't know what I should have done if it had not been for Anne Brown." "Anne Brown? Aunt Jerdein's servant?" said Claire bitterly. "You trusted her, then, in preference to your own sister." "No, I didn't, baby. She found me out. And besides, I daren't have told you. How you would have scolded me, you know," continued May. "Anne was very good to me, and I went and stayed with her mother when baby was born, and then Anne left aunt soon after. Aunt thought, you know, that I'd come down home, and, of course, you all thought I was still at aunt's. Anne Brown managed about the letters." "Go on," said Claire, who listened as if this were all some horrible fiction that she was forced to hear. "Then I did come home, and Anne Brown took care of poor baby with her mother, and it was terribly hard work to get money to send them, but somehow I did it; and then you know about Frank Burnett, how poor dear papa brought all that on." Claire uttered a sigh that was almost a groan, but the pretty little rosebud of a wife went prattling on, in selfish ignorance of the agony she was inflicting, dividing her attention between her dress and the picture of herself that was smiling down at her from the wall. "I suffered very much all that time, Claire dear, and, whenever I could, I used to go upstairs, lock myself in my room, and put on a little widow's cap I had--a very small one, dear, of white crape--and have a good cry about poor Louis. It was the only mourning I ever could wear for him, and it was nearly always locked up in the bottom drawer; but I used to carry a bit of black crape in my dress pocket, and touch that now and then. It was a little strip put through my wedding ring and tied in a knot. There it is," she said, fishing it out of her dress pocket; "but the strip of crape only looks like a bit of black rag now." She held out a tiny, plain gold ring for her sister to see, and it looked so small that it seemed as if it had been used sometime when a little girl had been playing at being married with some little boy, or at one of the child weddings that history records. "Poor Louis!" sighed May. "I was very fond of him. Then, when I was married again, of course I was able to send money up every week easily enough till Frank began to grow so stingy, when I've often had no end of trouble to get it together. But I always have managed somehow. Oh, dear me! This is a wearisome place, this world." Claire stood gazing down at her, and May went on: "Then all went smoothly enough till that stupid Anne's mother took a cold or something, and died; then Anne sent me word that she was going to be married, and I must fetch poor baby away." The sisters' eyes now met as May continued: