My mother was in danger and my baby brother dead.

The gloom that lay over our house was something never to be forgotten; the silence that was never broken by one laugh or one cheerful word, the scared faces--for every one loved "my lady." One fine morning, when the snowdrops had grown more plentiful, and there was a faint sign of the coming spring in the air, they took my baby brother to bury him.

Such a tiny coffin, such tiny white wreaths, a little white pall covered with flowers.

My father would not let black come near him.
My father wept bitter tears.
"There sleeps my little son and heir, Laura," he said to me--"my little boy.

It is as though he had just peeped out of Heaven at this world, and, not liking it, had gone back again." A pretty little white monument was put up to the baby Gerald.