crying out?"

Ah, me, that startled fear that leaped into her eyes, the sudden quiver
on the beautiful face.

"I do not know," she said; "I do not understand such things."

"What can it matter," I said, "whether a little child like this dies
conscious or not? It cannot pray--it must go straight to Heaven! Do you
not think anyone who loved it, and had to see it die, would think it
greatest kindness to drug it?"

My eyes held hers; I would not lose their glance; she could not take
them away. I saw the fear leap into them, then die away; she was saying
to herself, what could I know?

But I knew. I remembered what the doctor said in Brighton when the
inquest was held on the tiny white body, "that it had been mercifully
drugged before it was drowned."

"I cannot tell," she replied, with a gentle shake of the head. "I only
know that unfortunately the poor people use these kind of cordials too
readily. I should not like to decide whether in a case like this it is
true kindness or not."

"What a pretty child, Mr. Ford; what a pity that it must die!"

Could it be that she who bent with such loving care over this little
stranger, who touched its tiny face with her delicate lips, who held it
cradled in her soft arms, was the same desperate woman who had thrown