You thought it was Bray." "But it's Gray," said Edith, falling in with her mother's humor.

Then she added, still trying to keep her voice even, "She was my nurse when baby was born." "Yes; she was the nurse, but she didn't--" Checking herself, Mrs.Dinneford rose on one arm and looked at Edith in a frightened way, then said, hurriedly, "Oh, it's dead, it's dead! You know that; and the woman's dead, too." Edith sat motionless and silent as a statue, waiting for what more might come.

But her mother shut her lips tightly, and turned her head away.
A long time elapsed before she was able to read in her mother's confused utterances anything to which she could attach a meaning.

At last Mrs.
Dinneford spoke out again, and with an abruptness that startled her: "Not another dollar, sir! Remember, you don't hold _all_ the winning cards!" Edith held her breath, and sat motionless.

Her mother muttered and mumbled incoherently for a while, and then said, sharply, "I said I would ruin him, and I've done it!" "Ruin who ?" asked Edith, in a repressed voice.
This question, instead of eliciting an answer, as Edith had hoped, brought her mother back to semi-consciousness.