“Clarissa wrote at once to Arthur, who hastened home, finding his mother and sister at their wit’s end, and his wife raving mad, and calling continually for the baby she had lost, or hid. That was her constant theme—‘lost, or hid, or left somewhere.’ Arthur did his best to soothe her, telling her the baby was dead, and asking if she did not remember writing to him about it. But it did no good. Her reply was always the same: ‘One is dead, and one is not.’ “For hours she would sit repeating these words in a kind of moaning, half sobbing way, ‘one is dead, and one is not;’ and never from that time has she known a rational moment. Hunting out Alice’s cradle, she took it to her room, and rocked it day and night, saying her lost baby was in it, and raving fearfully if the family made a noise in the room. “This annoyed Arthur terribly. He likes quiet, and ease, and luxury, and, as he could not have these in his own house, he sought them elsewhere, and has travelled almost over the world. Twice Laura has been in a private asylum. She was there all the time we were abroad; but after our return Alice begged so hard for her to be allowed to come to Beechwood, that Arthur brought her back, and will never move her again. “Mother died the winter after Laura’s return, and Clarissa the year following. As my husband was dead, and I alone in the world, I came here to care for my brother and Alice. Poor girl! Her life has been a sad one, though she knows nothing, or comparatively nothing, of the early domestic trouble between her parents, and how her mother was received at Beechwood.” Mrs. Seymour paused here, and Magdalen, who had listened eagerly, asked, “If that child which died when it was four weeks old had lived, how old would it have been when Mr. Grey came home?” Mrs. Seymour could hardly tell, for the reason that in her letter to her husband Laura did not give the date of its birth but as nearly as they could judge it must have been nine or ten months old, possibly more. “Yes,” Magdalen said; “and the dress in the satchel,—did it never occur to you that it could not have been made for a four weeks’ old baby. It was meant for a larger child. And did you never think there might be a meaning in the words, ‘One is dead, and one is not,’ Mrs. Seymour?” and Magdalen grew more earnest and vehement. “There must have been two children instead of one,—twins, one of whom died and the other she left in the cars. I know it, I believe it. I shall prove it yet. She has always talked to me of two, and one she said was Madeline and one was Magdalen, and Mr. Irving told me that the woman in the cars called me something which sounded like Magdalen. Don’t you see it? Can’t you understand how it all might be?” Mrs. Seymour was confounded and bewildered, and answered faintly, “Oh, I don’t know; I wish Arthur was here.”