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. Mary cried as she sat and listened, shedding many soft tears. Her eyes shone behind them with joy and peace. She had found what she had lost. No more would her old lord frown upon her in her dream; no more would she feel that imperfection, that something which she could not understand, the mystery which had haunted her life, though she did not know what it was. She could not, perhaps would not, for even in this feeble state there is some moral control, allow herself to think further. It was enough that she had come out of the darkness, and that the light was sweet. When the daylight began to come in at the window and make the candles pale, Lady Frogmore rose, as light and serviceable as if it had not been she who had been surrounded with such anxious cares for so many years, and placed upon such a platform of weakness and disadvantage. She was not weak nor at any disadvantage now. Her maid slept. Her sister, who had ministered to her all these years, lay silent, looking on while she put out the candles and closed the shutter on the window. “I am coming to bed,” she said, “if you will make room for me, Agnes: not because I am tired, for I could sit and hear of him for ever, but because we must be early astir to-morrow, and I suppose rest is necessary. I don’t feel any need of it,” she said, with a soft laugh. “None at all. I feel young and strong as if I could do anything. I feel about twenty, Agnes. But make a little room and I think I shall sleep. It is like old times,” she said as she took her place by her sister’s side, “like old, old times, when the little girls were always together. Do you remember the time when we two were the little girls?”

They kissed each other, laughing and crying over that old recollection. How long, how long ago? And all life had passed since then, and here they were, two sisters growing old, with wrinkles upon the faces which the early light revealed, despising all the tender fictions of the night. Mary soon slept as she had said, fearing nothing, innocent in the discovery she had made. She fell asleep like a child with the light of the summer morning growing on her face. But Agnes could not sleep. When her sister’s regular breathing showed the deep repose in which she was wrapped, Agnes stole out of bed and went to the furthest window where there was a glimmer of the rising sun, and knelt down there in the dawning ray, turning her face towards the east. Why she could not have told. To turn her face towards the east was no spell, there was nothing in that to secure that her prayers should be heard. And it could not be said that she prayed. Her soul and body were both worn out. She knelt there silent, her head bowed in her hands. The new day was bringing life or death to Mar—which was it bringing, life or death? She knelt on silent, like an image of devotion. It was something at least to await that crisis, when it should come, upon her knees.

Lady Frogmore slept till it was late, long after Agnes had dressed and come upstairs again to await at her bedside her sister’s awakening with a little anxiety after all the excitement of the night. Mary had lain very still; she had not moved for hours, and was sleeping like a child. But when she began to give signs of waking, her appearance changed. She moved about uneasily, her face contracted as if with pain; she put out her hands as if appealing to some one. Suddenly she sprang up broad awake in her bed. “Ford!” she cried, and then “Agnes!” as she perceived her sister. Her breath came quick, a look of terror came over her face. “Who was it?” she cried, “Who was it—that said ‘May he grow up an idiot, and kill you——’ Who was it, Agnes?”

“Oh, my lady, my lady!” cried Ford from the other side of the bed.

“Mary! don’t think of that, for God’s sake.”

“Who was it?” she cried. “It was to me it was said.”

“Oh, my lady,” said Ford, “don’t think of such dreadful things.”

“‘May he grow up an idiot—and kill you—’ It was said to me—it was a curse upon my baby—my child! Who said it Agnes?—you know.”

“Oh, Mary, what does it matter now? What harm could such wicked words do to any one? Yes—yes, it is true. Mary, I ought not to tell you, it was Letitia. Oh, what does it matter now?”

Mary pushed her away, flinging herself out of her bed. “Not matter! Ford, let me dress at once. Order the carriage. Tell me what is the first train. We must go at once by the first train.”

“Where, Mary? Oh, my dear, where?”

“She asks me where?” cried Lady Frogmore, appealing in her excitement to the maid. “She asks me where, and she knows my boy is in that woman’s hands—my child in that woman’s hands: She said, may he grow up an idiot—my child, my baby! and he is in her hands. Oh, quick, quick, give me my things! Order the carriage! There is a train, early, that we went by before. Oh, the slow, horrible train it is, I remember, stopping everywhere; but at least don’t let us lose it now.”

“Is it to the Park you are going, Mary?”

“Where else?” cried Lady Frogmore; “is not my child there? and in her hands.” She was too impatient to accept the usual services of her maid, but dressed herself in wild haste, her trembling hands tying strings and fastening buttons all wrong. Her two attendants could do little but look on as in her agitation she snatched at everything. The gentle Mary, always so tranquil and mild, was transfigured with passion and eagerness. When she heard that it was loo late for the morning train, it was a shriek rather than a cry which burst from her breast. “Oh, why did you let me sleep? Why did I sleep?” she cried bitterly. There was no possibility of calming her, no means of explaining how they had arranged everything for her comfort that she might rest after her unusual excitement and exhaustion. She, rest! Mary, who had been the object of unceasing care for years, whose every mood had been considered, and from whom everybody near warded and kept off any possible shade of annoyance, forgot all that in a moment. She became the Mary of old, she who was Letitia’s right hand, she who spared no trouble, who thought of everybody but herself. Mary was as much surprised at being the first to be thought of, at having her rest cared for, as if that long time of care and observance had never been. “Rest for me,” she cried. “You should have known better, Agnes—you might have known I should not rest till I have seen my boy.” She woke without a cloud upon her memory of that fact, but with this new dread sprung up in her mind which could not be calmed down. They set off in time for a later train after a weary interval of waiting, an interval that seemed to both as if it would never end. Mary had been seized in the new sense of motherhood with a panic and fear of alarm which nothing could quench. She who had forgiven everything to Letitia, who had thought of nothing either in her madness or her recovery but the interests of her former friend, now feared her as if she were a criminal, and felt that every moment the heir remained in her hands was a moment of danger. “She will do him no harm,” Agnes tried to say. “She is not kind. She does not love him, but she will do him no harm.” Mary would not listen to this voice of reason. The woman who had wished that the unborn child should grow up an idiot and kill his parents appeared in no light but that of a possible murderess to her who had newly discovered his existence and that she was his mother. She waved off her sister’s soothing words. She put Agnes herself—Agnes who had loved him always, who had been his first guardian, all the mother he had ever known—in a secondary place as one who could not divine the passion of the mother love. “It is easy for you to speak,” she said, crying out in her impatience that the horses crept, that they would be too late for the train, and then that the train itself was like a country cart, and would not go. Then there came those long waitings at the junction, the interval between one little country conveyance and another. The rain of yesterday had all passed away. The day was bright, illuminating the face of the country, mocking at the heaviness of the travellers. Lady Frogmore was flushed and eager, full of enquiry, walking about during the times of waiting, explaining to everybody that she was going to her son, to bring him home, to the great confusion of those who knew her story, and new too that Mar lay dying. Her acquaintances looked at her with trouble and suspicion, looked anxiously aside at Ford, who followed her mistress about as she walked up and down. Had poor Lady Frogmore’s brain given way again, was what they asked each other with their eyes? But it was none of their business, and there was no one important enough to interfere.

As for Agnes, she was incapable of any activity. When she was permitted to be quiet for a moment there fell upon her heart the other dreadful burden which Mary had not understood, which Agnes shrank from insisting upon. Was it all too late, too late, a terrible irony of Providence which sometimes seems to keep the word of promise to the ear, as well as the pagan fates, to give when the gift is no longer of any use? Was his mother hurrying in all the new passion of her love and trust to find no child, no son, but only what was mortal, the poor cast-off garment of flesh that had once been her boy? Was it all over, that struggle? or had it perhaps ended, as the nurse hoped, in life and not in death? As she approached the time when she should know, Agnes’ mind began to play with this hope: tremulous gleams of happiness and possibility flashing before her eyes, which she dared not receive or dwell upon, but which came to her without any will of hers, flaming through the dark, lighting up the skies, then sinking into greater gloom than ever. While Mary walked about in the intervals of waiting, Agnes sat out of sight in the most retired corner she could find, dumb and faint with the awful suspense. She could not communicate to her sister what she feared, yet feared doubly for the consequence to Mary if in the heat of her newly awakened feeling she should come suddenly against that thick blank of loss. Oh, to forestall the wrong turn, to know what a few hours might bring forth—happiness, the perfection being a new life, a brighter world—or madness, misery and death? Thus the one sister sat dumb and incapable of speech, her throat dry and her lips parched, while the other, all energy and eagerness, soothed her impatience by movement and eager communication of her purpose—going to find her boy.

The railways have almost annihilated distance everybody says, and it is true. But when a succession of slow country trains on cross lines have to be gone through, with many pauses, stoppages, and changes, there is nothing which gives the same impression of delay and miserable tardihood. To haste for a little time towards your end, and then to stop and spend as long a time or longer in aimless waiting, repeating the same again and again in an afternoon’s journey! No wagon on the country road seems to be so slow, so lingering, so impossible to quicken. It was dark when they arrived at the nearest station to the Park, and then a long interval followed before they could obtain the broken-down rattling, clattering country fly which drove them six miles further to the Park. It was all that Agnes’ lips could do to utter an inquiry “How is Lord Frogmore?” when the keeper of the lodge awoke, up out of his first sleep, stumbled forth to open the gate, half reluctant to admit visitors at such an hour. “I think I heard as the young lord’s a bit better,” said the yawning lodge-keeper. Her heart leapt up, almost choking her in her sudden relief. But how did she dare to trust this indifferent outsider, who cared nothing? At least, at least, he lived still, which was much. Mary had grown quite silent in the excitement of the arrival. She put her hand into her sister’s and grasped it as if to keep herself up, but said nothing. They dismounted out of the noisy fly at the end of the avenue, Mary obeying the impulse of Agnes, asking no reason. There were still lights about the upper windows, and a glimmer in the hall, the door of which was opened to them by a servant who was in waiting, and who at first looked as if he would refuse them admittance, but gave way at the sight of the two ladies. He gave Agnes in a subdued whisper the bulletin, “A little better—fever diminished,” which in the instantaneous and unspeakable relief, took all strength and power to move from her after all her sufferings. She leaned back upon Ford, nearly fainting, her eyes closing, her limbs refusing to support her. In that moment Lady Frogmore drew her hand from her sister’s. She asked no questions. No weakness or sinking of heart or courage was in her. She neither looked nor spoke to any one round her, but swiftly detaching herself, throwing off her cloak, disappeared up the great, partially-lighted staircase as swift and as noiseless as a ghost.