Aunt Penelope came next, and though her greeting was more in accordance with perfect propriety, there was much genuine affection and kindness in it, and Magdalen knew that she believed in her and accepted her as a niece. Mr. Grey was nowhere to be seen. He had stood an instant and looked on when Alice and Magdalen first met, then he vanished from sight, and Alice found him half an hour later in her mother’s room, whither he had gone at once. Perhaps the recovery of his daughter had brought back something of his olden love for Laura, or there were really better impulses at work within, for his first thought was for his wife, and when, as he came in, she asked if “She did not look nice,” he stooped and kissed her as he had not done in years; and the poor creature, who had known so much suffering, clung to him, and laying her aching head upon his bosom, sobbed and wept like a child, saying to herself, “he did, he did—kiss me,—he did—” “Laura,” Mr. Grey said, softly, when she had grown a little calm, “try to understand me, won’t you? The lost baby is found. It is Magdalen, too, whom a kind man took care of. We have seen Mrs. Storms in Cynthiana; you remember her?” Laura remembered Mrs. Storms, and for a few moments the fixed expression of her eyes and the drawn look about her forehead and mouth showed that reason was making a tremendous effort to grasp and retain what she heard. But it had been dethroned too long to penetrate the darkness now, and when she spoke, it was to assert that “baby was in the cradle over there; Magdalen was too big to be her baby.” Hopeless and disheartened, Mr. Grey desisted in his attempts to make her understand, but stayed by her till Alice came to say that dinner waited. It was thought best that Magdalen should not see Laura until the next morning, when it was hoped that she might convey some definite idea to her mind. They were to meet alone, and after breakfast Magdalen repaired to the sick-room, and entering unannounced, was received by her mother with outstretched arms and a cry of joy. “You’ve been gone long, Magda,—so long,” she said, “and my head has ached so for you.” “But I’ve come now to stay always. I have found the baby, too. Let me tell you about it,” Magdalen replied, controlling her own emotions with a mighty effort, and keeping as calm and composed as it was possible for her to do. “I’ll make it like a story,” she said; and Laura listened very quietly while Magdalen, beginning at the funeral of Mrs. Clayton, went over the whole ground correctly, until she reached the _cars_ and the _boy_ who took the baby. Then she purposely deviated from the truth, and said it was a _woman_ to whom the child was given. “No, no, not a woman,” Laura exclaimed, vehemently. “It was a boy, and I sat with him, and my head was all in a snarl. I fell when I got out of the stage in Cincinnati, and struck it a heavy blow on the pavement, and it set to buzzing so loud.”