Two years later Mrs. Sloper gave birth to a second infant - an infant of a sex which rendered the poor child, to the doctor's sense, an inadequate substitute for his lamented firstborn, or whom he had promised himself to make an admirable man. The little girl was a disappointment; but this was not the worst. A week after her birth the young mother, who, as the phrase is, had been doing well, suddenly betrayed alarming symptoms, and before another week had elapsed Austen Sloper was a widower.