I felt my face flush as though Dicky could see me. The reason why he did not have time to see to his mother's trunks on the day of her arrival, touched a subject any allusion to which would always bring a flush to my face.

I was still too shaken with the varying emotions I had experienced the day before to bear well any reference to them, no matter how casual. Fortunately, Dicky was too much taken up with his own remissness to notice my silence.

"I'll go out this minute and attend to them," he said. "Try to keep the mater's mind diverted from them if you can. Better get her away on your sight-seeing trip as soon as possible."

Having thus shifted his responsibilities to my shoulders, Dicky blithely hung up the receiver. I turned to his mother.

"Well!" she demanded.

"He is going out now to attend to the trunks," I said.

"There! I knew he had forgotten them," she exclaimed, with a little malicious feminine triumph running through her tones. "When will they be here?"

"Not before noon at the earliest," I repeated Dicky's words in as matter-of-fact way as possible. "Probably not until 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon. We might as well start on our trip. Katie is perfectly capable of attending to them."

Then she said, "How soon will you be ready?"

"I am afraid it will be half an hour before I can start," I said apologetically.

"That will be all right," my mother-in-law returned good humoredly. She was evidently much pleased at the prospect of the trip.

"It's wonderful! Wonderful!" she said as the full view of New York harbor burst upon our eyes when we came out of the subway and rounded the Barge office into Battery Park.

"Wait a moment. I want to fill my soul with it."

I felt my heart warm toward her. I have always loved the harbor. Many treasured hours have I spent watching it from the sea wall or from the deck of one of the Staten Island ferries. To me it is like a loved friend. I enjoy hearing its praises, I shrink from hearing it criticised. Mrs. Graham's hearty admiration made me feel more kindly toward her than I had yet done.

Neither of us spoke again for several minutes. My gaze followed my mother-in-law's as she turned from one marvel of the view to another.

At last she turned to me, her face softened. "I am ready to go on now," she said. "I have always loved the remembrance of this harbor since I first saw it years ago."

We walked slowly on toward the Aquarium, both of us watching the ships as they came into the bay from the North river. The fussy, spluttering little tugs, the heavily laden ferries, the lazy fishing boats, the dredges and scows—even the least of them was made beautiful by its setting of clear winter sun and sparkling water.

"How few large ocean steamers there seem to be!" commented my mother-in-law, as a large ocean-going vessel cast off its tug and glided past us on its way out to sea. "I suppose it is on account of the war," she continued indifferently.

At this moment I heard a comment from a passing man that brought back to me the misery of the day before.

"I guess that's the Saturn," he said to his companion as they walked near us. "She was due to sail this morning. Got a lot of French reservists on board. Poor devils! Anybody getting into that hell over there has about one chance in a million to get out again."

Forgetful of my mother-in-law's presence, indeed, of everything else in the world, I turned and gazed at the steamer making its way out to sea. I knew that somewhere on its decks stood Jack, my brother-cousin, the best friend my mother and I had ever known. When he had come back from a year's absence to ask me to be his wife he had found that I had married Dicky. Then he had announced his intention of joining the French engineering corps.

What had that man said just now? Not one chance in a million! I felt as if it were my hand that was pushing him across the ocean to almost certain death.

When I could no longer see the Saturn as she churned her way out to sea, I turned around quickly with a sense of guilt at having ignored my mother-in-law's presence, and then a voice sounded in my ear.

"You don't seem delighted to see me. I am surprised at you."

Harry Underwood towered above me, his handsome face marred by the little, leering smile he generally wears, his bold, laughing eyes staring down into my horrified ones.

I do not believe that ever a woman of a more superstitious time dreaded the evil eye as I do the glance of Harry Underwood.

How to answer him or what to do I did not know. He evidently had been drinking enough to make himself irresponsible.

He did not give me time to ponder long, however, "Who is your lady friend," he burlesqued. "Introduce me."

A man less audacious than Harry Underwood would have been daunted by the picture my mother-in-law presented as he turned toward her. Her figure was drawn up to its extreme height, and she was surveying him through her lorgnette with an expression that held disgust mingled with the curiosity an explorer might feel at meeting some strange specimen of animal in his travels.

"Mrs. Graham, this is Mr. Underwood," I managed to stammer. "Mr. Underwood, Mrs. Graham, Dicky's mother."

My mother-in-law may overawe ordinary people, but Harry Underwood minded her disdain no more than he would have the contempt of a stately Plymouth Rock hen. She had lowered the lorgnette as I spoke, and he grabbed the hand which still held it, shaking it as warmly as if it belonged to some long-lost friend.

"Well! Well!" he said effusively. "But this is great. Dear old Dicky's mother!" He stopped and fixed a speculating stare upon her. "You mean his sister," he said reprovingly to me. "Don't tell me you mean his mother. No, no, I can't believe that."

He shook his head solemnly. Evidently he was much impressed with himself. If I had not been so miserable I could have smiled at the idea of Harry Underwood trying on the elder Mrs. Graham the silly specious flatteries he addressed to most women. My mother-in-law did not deign to answer him. Her manner was superb in its haughty reserve, although I could not say much for her courtesy. As he released her hand she let it drop quietly to her side and stood still, gazing at him with a quiet, disdainful look that would have made almost any other man wince.

But it did not bother Harry Underwood in the least. He gave her a shrewd appraising look and then turned to me with an air of dismissal that was as complete as her ignoring of him.

"Say!" he demanded, "aren't you a bit curious about what brought me down here? You ought to be. The funniest thing in the world, my being down here."

His silly repetitions, his slurred enunciation, his slightly unsteady figure made me realize with a quick horror that the man was more intoxicated than I supposed. How to get away from him as quickly as possible was the problem I faced. I decided to humor him as I would any other insane person I dreaded.

"I am never curious," I responded lightly. "I suppose, of course, that you are here to visit the Aquarium, as we are. Good-by."

"No you don't—goin' to take you and little lady here on nice ferry trip," he announced genially. "Sorry, yacht's out of commission this morning, but ferry will do very well."

I have not much reason to like my mother-in-law, but I shall always be grateful to her for the way she cut the Gordian knot of my difficulties.

"Young man, you are impertinent and intoxicated," she said haughtily. "Please step aside."

And taking me firmly by the arm my mother-in-law walked steadily with me toward the door of the women's rest room. Her manner of conducting me was much the same as the matron of a reformatory would use in taking a charge from one place to another, but I was too relieved to care. The leering face of Harry Underwood was no longer before my eyes, and his befuddled words no longer jarred upon my ears. Those were the only things that mattered to me for the moment. In my relief I felt strong enough to brave the weight of my mother-in-law's anger, which I was very sure was about to descend upon me.



XVII

A DANGER AND A PROBLEM

Safe in the shelter of the Aquarium rest room my mother-in-law faced me. Her eyes were cold and hard, her tones like ice, as she spoke.

"Margaret! What is the meaning of this outrageous scene to which you have just subjected me? Am I to understand that this man is typical of your associates and friends? If so, I am indeed sorrier than ever that my son was ever inveigled into marrying you."

For the moment I had a primitive instinct to scream and to smash things generally, a sort of Berserk rage. The insult left me deadly cold. Fortunately we were alone in the room, but I lowered my voice almost to a whisper as I replied to her:

"Mrs. Graham," I said. "I never in my life knew there was a man like Mr. Underwood until I married your son. He and his wife, Lillian Gale, are your son's most intimate friends. He has almost forced me to meet them time and again against my own inclinations. Of course, after what you have just said, there can be no further question of our trip together. If you will kindly wait here I will telephone your son to come and get you at once."

I started for the door, but a little gasping cry from my mother-in-law stopped me. She was feebly beating the air with her hands, her eyes were distended, and her cheeks and lips had the ashen color which I had learned to associate with my own little mother's frequent attacks.

Filled with remorse, I flew to her side and lowered her gently into an arm chair which stood near. Snatching her handbag I opened it and took out a little bottle of volatile salts which I knew she carried. I pressed it into her hands, and then took out a tiny bottle of drops with a familiar label. They were the same that my mother had used for years. Taking a spoon which I also found in the bag, I measured the drops, added a bit of water from the faucet in the adjoining room, and gave them to her. As I came toward her I heard her murmuring to herself:

"Lillian Gale! Lillian Gale!" she was saying. "How blind I've been."

Even in my anxiety for her condition I found time to wonder as to the significance of her exclamations. Evidently the name of Lillian Gale was familiar to her. From her tones also I knew that it was not a welcome name. What was there in this past friendship of Dicky and Mrs. Underwood to cause his mother so much emotion? I remembered the comments I had heard at the theatre about my husband's friendship with this woman.

All my old doubts and misgivings which had been smothered by the very real admiration I had felt for Lillian Gale's many good qualities revived. What was the secret in the lives of these two? I felt that for my own peace of mind I must know.

The color was gradually coming back to my mother-in-law's face. I stood by her chair, forgetting her insults, remembering nothing save that she was old and a sick woman.

"Is there anything I can get for you?" I asked as I saw the strained look in her eyes die out.

"Nothing, thank you," she said. Then to my surprise she reached up her hand, took mine in hers, and pressed it feebly. I could not understand her quick transition from bitter contempt to friendly warmth. Evidently something in my words had startled her and had changed her viewpoint. But I put speculation aside until some more opportune time. The imperative thing for me was to minister to her needs, mentally and physically.

"How do you feel now?" I asked.

"Much better, thank you," she replied. Then in a tone I had never heard from her lips before: "Come here, my child."

I could hardly credit my own ears. Surely those gentle words, that soft tone, could not belong to my husband's mother, who, in the short time she had been an inmate of our home, had lost no opportunity to show her dislike for me, and her resentment that her son had married me.

But I obeyed her and came to her side. She put up her hand and took mine, and I saw her proud old face work with emotion.

"I was unjust to you a few moments ago, Margaret," she said, "and I want to beg your pardon."

If she had not been old, in feeble health and my husband's mother, I would have considered the words scant reparation for the contemptuous phrases with which she had scourged my spirit a few moments before.

But I was sane enough to know that the simple "I beg your pardon" from the lips of the elder Mrs. Graham was equivalent to a whole torrent of apologies from any ordinary person. I knew my mother-in-law's type of mind. To admit she was wrong, to ask for one's forgiveness, was to her a most bitter thing.

So I put aside from me every other feeling but consideration of the proud old woman holding my hand, and said gently:

"I can assure you that I cherish no resentment. Let us not speak of it again."

"I am afraid we shall have to speak of it, at least of the incident which led me to say the things to you I did," she returned. I saw with amazement that she was trying to conquer an emotion, the reason for which I felt certain had something to do with her discovery that the Underwoods were Dick's friends.

"I have a duty to you to perform," she went on, "a very painful duty, which involves the reviving of an old controversy with my son. I beg that you will not try to find out anything concerning its nature. It is far better that you do not."

I felt smothered, as if I were being swathed in folds upon folds of black cloth. What could this mystery be, this secret in the past friendship of my husband and Lillian Gale, the woman whom he had introduced to me as his best friend, and into whose companionship and that of her husband, Harry Underwood, he had thrown me as much as possible.

A hot anger rose within me. What right had anyone to deny knowledge of such a secret, or to discourage me in any attempt to find out its nature. I resolved to lose no time in probing the unworthy thing to its depths.

My mother-in-law's next words crystallized my determination.

"I think I ought to see Richard at once," she said. "I am sorry to give up our trip. I had quite counted upon seeing some of old New York today, but I wish to lose no time in seeing him. Besides, I do not think I am equal to further sightseeing."

"It will be of no use for you to go home," I said smoothly, "for Richard will not be there, and he has left the studio by now, I am sure. He has an engagement with an art editor this afternoon. We may not be able to look at the churches you wished to see, but you ought to have some luncheon before we go home. I will call a cab and we will go over to Fraunces's Tavern, one of the most interesting places in New York. You know Washington said farewell to his officers in the long room on the second floor."

The first part of my sentence was a deliberate falsehood. I had no reason to believe Dicky would not be at his studio all day, but I had resolved that no one should speak to my husband on the subject of the secret which his past and that of Lillian Gale shared until I had had a chance to talk to him about it.

I do not know when a simple problem has so perplexed me as did the dilemma I faced while sitting opposite my mother-in-law at lunch in Fraunces's Tavern.

With the obstinacy of a spoiled child the elder Mrs. Graham was persisting in sitting with her heavy coat on while she ate her luncheon, although our table was next to the big, old fireplace, in which a good fire was burning. Indeed, it was the table's location, which she had selected herself, that was the cause of her obstinacy. She had construed an innocent remark of mine into a slur upon her choice, and had evidently decided to wear her coat to emphasize the fact that in spite of the fire she was none too warm, and there she had sat all through lunch with her heavy coat on.

As I watched the beads of perspiration upon her forehead, and her furtive dabbing at them with her handkerchief, I realized that something must be done. I saw that she would soon be in a condition to receive a chill, which might prove fatal.

Suddenly her imperious voice broke into my thoughts.

"Where is the Long Room of which you spoke? On the second floor?"

"Yes. Would you like to see it?"

"Very much." She rose from her chair, crossed the dining room into the hall and ascended the staircase, and I followed her upward, noting again, with a quick remorsefulness, her slow step, the way she leaned upon the stair rail for support and her quickened breathing as she neared the top. It was a little thing, after all, I told myself sharply, to subordinate my individuality and cater to her whims. I resolved to be more considerate of her in the future. But my native caution made me make a reservation. I would yield to her wishes whenever my self-respect would let me do so. I had a shrewd notion that a person who would cater to every whim of my husband's mother would be little better than a slave.

She spent so much time over the old letters in Washington's handwriting, the snuff boxes and keys and coins with which the cases were filled that I was alarmed lest she should over-tire herself. But I did not dare to venture the suggestion that she should postpone her inspection until another time.

But when I saw her shiver and draw her cloak more closely about her, I resolved to brave her possible displeasure.

"I am afraid you are taking cold," I said, going up to her. "Do you think we had better leave the rest of these things for another visit?"

Her face as she turned it toward me frightened me. It was gray and drawn, and her whole figure was shaking as with the ague.

"I am afraid I am going to be ill," she said faintly. "I am so cold."

I put her in a chair and dashed down the stairs.

"Please call a taxi for me at once, and bring some brandy or wine upstairs," I said to the attendant. "My mother-in-law is ill."

As the taxi hurried us homeward I became more and more alarmed at her condition. Her very evident suffering now heightened my fears.

"Are we nearly there?" she said faintly. "I am so cold."

"Only a few blocks more." I tried to speak reassuringly. Then I ventured on something which I had wanted to do ever since we left the tavern, but which my mother-in-law's dislike of being aided in any way had prevented.

I slipped off my coat, and, turning toward her, wrapped it closely around her shoulders, and took her in my arms as I would a child. To my surprise she huddled closer to me, only protesting faintly:

"You must not do that. You will take cold."

"Nonsense," I replied. "I never take cold, and we are almost there."

"I am so glad," she sighed, and leaned more heavily against me.

As I felt her weight in my arms and realized that she was actually clinging to me, actually depending upon me for help and comfort, I felt my heart warm toward her.

I have never worked faster in my life than when I helped my mother-in-law undress before the blazing gas log, put her nightgown and heavy bathrobe around her and immersed her feet in the foot bath of hot mustard water which Katie had brought to me.

As I worked over her I came to a decision. I would get her safe and warm in bed, leave Katie within call, then slip out and telephone Dicky from the neighboring drug store. I did not dare to send for a physician against my mother-in-law's expressed prohibition. On the other hand, I knew that Dicky would be very angry if I did not send for one.

The hot footbath and the steaming drink which I had given her when she first came in, together with the warmth of the gas log seemed to make my mother-in-law more comfortable. As I dried her feet and slipped them into a pair of warm bedroom slippers she smiled down at me.

"At least I am not cold now," she said.

"Don't you think you had better come and lie down now?" I asked.

"Yes, I think it would be better," she asserted, and with Katie and me upon either side, she walked into her room and got into bed.

I slipped the bedroom slippers off, put one hot water bag to her feet and the other to her back, covered her up warmly and lowered the shade.

Her eyes closed immediately. I stood watching her breathing for two or three minutes. It was heavier, I fancied than normal. As I went out of the room I spoke in a low tone to Katie, directing her to watch her till I returned.

As I descended the stairs all the doubts of the morning rushed over me. It was long after 2 o'clock, the hour when Dicky usually returned to the studio. I had jumped at the conclusion that Dicky was lunching with Grace Draper, the beautiful art student who was his model and protege.

It was not so much anger that I felt at Dicky's lunching with another woman as fear. I faced the issue frankly. Grace Draper was much too beautiful and attractive a girl to be thrown into daily intimate companionship with any man. I felt in that moment that I hated her as much as I feared her. I hoped that it would not be her voice which I would hear over the 'phone. I felt that I could not bear to listen to those deep, velvety tones of hers.

But when I reached the drug store and entered the telephone booth, it was her voice which answered my call of Dicky's number.

"Yes, this is Mr. Graham's studio," she said smoothly. "No, Mr. Graham is not here, he has not been here since 11 o'clock. Pardon me, is this not Mrs. Graham to whom I am speaking?"

"I am Mrs. Graham, yes," I replied, trying to put a little cordiality into my voice. "You are Miss Draper, are you not?"

"Yes," she replied. "Mr. Graham wished me to give you a message. He was called away to a conference with one of the art editors about 11 o'clock. He expected to lunch with him and said he might not be in the studio until quite late this afternoon."

"Have you any idea where he is lunching or where I could reach him?" I asked sharply.

"Why! no, Mrs. Graham, I have not. Is there anything wrong?"

"His mother has been taken ill and I am very much worried about her. If Mr. Graham comes in or telephones will you ask him to come home at once, 'phoning me first if he will."

"Of course I will attend to it. Is there anything else I can do?"

"Nothing, thank you, you are very kind," I returned, and there was genuine warmth in my voice this time.

For the discovery that I had been mistaken in my idea of Dicky's luncheon engagement made me so ashamed of myself that I had no more rancor against my husband's beautiful protege.

I laughed bitterly at my own silliness as I turned from the telephone. While I had been tormenting myself for hours at the picture I had drawn of Dicky and his beautiful model lunching vis-a-vis, Dicky had been keeping a prosaic business engagement with a man, and his model had probably lunched frugally and unromantically on a sandwich or two brought from home.



XVIII

"CALL ME MOTHER—IF YOU CAN"

"Will you kindly tell me who is the best physician here?"

"Why—I—pardon me—" the drug store clerk stammered. "Wait a moment and I'll inquire. I'm new here."

"The boss says this chap's the best around here." He held out a penciled card to me. "Dr. Pettit. Madison Square 4258."

"Dr. Pettit!" I repeated to myself. "Why! that must be the physician who came to the apartment the night of my chafing dish party, when the baby across the hall was brought to us in a convulsion."

A sudden swift remembrance came to me of the tact and firmness with which the tall young physician had handled the difficult situation he had found in our apartment. He was just the man, I decided, to handle my refractory mother-in-law. So I called him up and he promised to call as soon as his office hours were over.

My feet traveled no faster than my thoughts as I hurried back to my own apartment and the bedside of my mother-in-law. I dreaded inexpressibly the conflict I foresaw when the autocratic old woman should find out that I had sent for a physician against her wishes.

As I entered the living room Katie rose from her seat at the door of my mother-in-law's room.

"She not move while you gone," she said. "She sleep all time, but I 'fraid she awful seeck, she breathe so hard."

I went lightly into the bedroom and stood looking down upon the austere old face against the pillow. It was a flushed old face now, and the eyelids twitched as if there were pain somewhere in the body. Her breathing, too, was more rapid and heavy than when I had left her, or so I fancied.

My inability to do anything for her depressed me. By slipping my hand under the blankets I had ascertained that the hot water bags were sufficiently warm. There was nothing more for me to do but to sit quietly and watch her until the physician's arrival.

I wanted to bring Dr. Pettit to her bedside before she should awaken. Then I would let him deal with her obstinate refusal to see a physician. But how I wished that Dicky would come home.

As if I had rubbed Aladdin's lamp, I heard the hall door slam, and my husband came rushing into the room.

"What is the matter with mother?" Dicky demanded, his face and voice filled with anxiety.

I sprang to him and put my hand to his lips, for he had almost shouted the words.

"Hush! She is asleep," I whispered. "Don't waken her if you can help it."

"Why isn't there a doctor here?" he demanded fiercely.

"Dr. Pettit will be here in a very few moments," I whispered rapidly. "Your mother said she would not have a physician, but she appeared so ill I did not dare to wait until your return to the studio. I telephoned you, and when Miss Draper said she did not know where to get you, I 'phoned to Dr. Pettit on my own authority."

"You don't think mother is in any danger, do you, Madge?"

"Why, I don't think I am a good judge of illness," I answered, evasively, unwilling to hurt Dicky by the fear in my heart. "The physician ought to be here any minute now, and then we will know."

A sharp, imperative ring of the bell and Katie's entrance punctuated my words. Dicky started toward the door as Katie opened it to admit the tall figure of Dr. Pettit.

"Ah, Dr. Pettit I believe we have met before," Dicky said easily. "When Mrs. Graham spoke of you I did not remember that we had seen you so recently. I am glad that we were able to get you."

"Thank you," the physician returned gravely. "Where is the patient?"

"In this room." Dicky turned toward the bedroom door, and Dr. Pettit at once walked toward it. I mentally contrasted the two men as I followed them to my mother-in-law's room. There was a charming ease of manner about Dicky which the other man did not possess. He was, in fact, almost awkward in his movements, and decidedly stiff in his manner. But there was an appearance of latent strength in every line of his figure, a suggestion of power and ability to cope with emergencies. I had noticed it when he took charge of the baby in convulsions who had been brought to my apartment by its nurse. I marked it again as Dicky paused at the door of his mother's room.

"I don't know how you will manage, doctor." He smiled deprecatingly. "My mother positively refuses to see a physician, but we know she needs one."

"You are her nearest relative?" Dr. Pettit queried gravely, almost formally. His question had almost the air of securing a legal right for his entrance into the room.

"Oh, yes."

"Very well," and he stepped lightly to the side of the bed and stood looking down upon the sick woman.

He took out his watch, and I knew he was counting her respirations. Then, with the same impersonal air, he turned to Dicky.

"It will be necessary to rouse her. Will you awaken her, please? Do not tell her I am here. Simply waken her."

Dicky bent over his mother and took her hand.

"Mother, what was it you wished me to get for you?"

The elder Mrs. Graham opened her eyes languidly.

"I told you quinine," she said impatiently. As she spoke, Dr. Pettit reached past Dicky. His hand held a thermometer.

"Put this in your mouth, please." His air was as casual as if he had made daily visits to her for a fortnight.

But the elder Mrs. Graham was not to be so easily routed. She scowled up at him and half rose from her pillow.

"I do not wish a physician. I forbade having one called. I am not ill enough for a physician."

Dr. Pettit put out his left hand and gently put her back again upon her pillow. It was done so deftly that I do not think she realized what he had done until she was again lying down.

"You must not excite yourself," he said, still in the same grave, impersonal tone, "and you are more ill than you think. It is absolutely necessary that I get your temperature and examine your lungs at once."

As if the words had been a talisman of some sort, her opposition dropped from her. Into her face came a frightened look.

"Oh, doctor, you don't think I am going to have pneumonia, do you?"

I was amazed at the cry. It was like that of a terrified child. Dr. Pettit smiled down at her.

"We hope not. We shall do our best to keep it away. But you must help me. Put this in your mouth, please."

My mother-in-law obeyed him docilely. But my heart sank as I watched the physician's face.

Suddenly she cried out, "Richard! Richard, if I am in danger of pneumonia, as this doctor thinks, I want a trained nurse here at once, one who has had experience in pneumonia cases. Margaret means well, but threatened pneumonia with my heart needs more than good intentions."

"Of course, mother," Dicky acquiesced. "I was just about to suggest one to Dr. Pettit."

"But, doctor," Dicky said anxiously when we followed him into the living room, "where are we to find a nurse?"

"Fortunately," Dr. Pettit rejoined, "I have just learned that absolutely the best nurse I know is free. Her name is Miss Katherine Sonnot, and her skill and common sense are only equalled by her exquisite tact. She is just the person to handle the case, and if you will give me the use of your 'phone I think I can have her here within an hour."

"Of course," assented Dicky, and led the way to the telephone.

I did not hear what the physician said at first, but as he closed the conversation a note in his voice arrested my attention.

"You are sure you are not too tired? Very well. I will see you here tonight. Good-by."

Woman-like, I thought I detected a romance. The tenderness in his voice could mean but one thing, that he admired, perhaps loved the woman he had praised so extravagantly.

After he went away, promising to return in the evening, I busied myself with the services to my mother-in-law he had asked me to perform, and then sat down to wait for Miss Sonnot. Dicky wandered in and out like a restless ghost until I wanted to shriek from very nervousness.

But the first glimpse of the slender girl who came quietly into the room and announced herself as Miss Sonnot steadied me. She was a "slip of a thing," as my mother would have dubbed her, with great, wistful brown eyes that illumined her delicate face. But there was an air of efficiency about her every movement that made you confident she would succeed in anything she undertook.

I have always been such a difficult, reserved sort of woman that I have very few friends. I did not understand the impulse that made me resolve to win this girl's friendship if I could.

One thing I knew. The grave, sweet face, the steady eyes told me. One could lay a loved one's life in those slim, capable hands and rest assured that as far as human aid could go it would be safe.

"Keep her quiet. Above all things, do not let her get excited over anything."

Miss Sonnot was giving me my parting instructions as to the care of my sick mother-in-law before taking the sleep which she so sorely needed, on the day that Dr. Pettit declared my mother-in-law had passed the danger point. Thanks to her ministrations I had been able to sleep dreamlessly for hours. Now refreshed and ready for anything, I had prepared my room for her, and had accompanied her to it that I might see her really resting.

She was so tired that her eyes closed even as she gave me the admonition. I drew the covers closer about her, raised the window a trifle, drew down the shades, and left her.

As I closed the door softly behind me, I heard the querulous voice of the invalid:

"Margaret! Margaret! Where are you?"

As I bent over my husband's mother she smiled up at me. Her illness had done more to bridge the chasm, between us than years of companionship could have done. One cannot cherish bitterness toward an old woman helplessly ill and dependent upon one. And I think in her own peculiar way she realized that I was giving her all I had of strength and good will.

"What can I do for you?" I asked, returning her smile.

"I want something to eat, and after that I want to have a talk with Richard. Where is he?"

"He is asleep," I answered mechanically. In a moment my thoughts had flown back to the day my mother-in-law and I had met Harry Underwood in trip Aquarium, and she had discovered he was Lillian Gale's husband.

What was it Dicky's mother had said that day in the Aquarium rest room?

"I have a duty to you to perform," she had declared, "a very painful duty, which involves the reviving of an old controversy with my son. I beg that you will not try to find out anything concerning its nature. It is better far that you do not."

She had wished to go home at once and talk to Dicky. I had persuaded her to go first to Fraunces's Tavern for luncheon. There she had been taken ill, and in the days that had intervened between that time and the moment I leaned over her bedside she and we around her had been fighting for her life. There had been no opportunity for a confidential talk between mother and son. And I was determined that there should be none yet.

In the first place, she was in no condition to discuss any subject, let alone one fraught with so many possibilities of excitement. In the second place, I was determined that no one should discuss that old secret with my husband before I had a chance to talk to him concerning it.

"Well, you needn't go to sleep just because Richard is."

My mother-in-law's impatient voice brought me back to myself. I apologized eagerly.

I have never seen any one enjoy food as my mother-in-law did the simple meal I had prepared for her. She ate every crumb, drank the wine, and drained the pot of tea before she spoke.

"How good that tasted!" she said gratefully as she finished, sinking back against my shoulder. I had not only propped her up with pillows, but had sat behind her as she ate, that she might have the support of my body.

"I think I can take a long nap now," she went on. "When I awake send Richard to me."

I laid her down gently, arranged her pillows, and drew up the covers over her shoulders. She caught my hand and pressed it.

"My own daughter could not have been kinder to me than you have been," she said.

"I am glad to have pleased you, Mrs. Graham," I returned. I suppose my reply sounded stiff, but I could not forget the day she came to us, and her contemptuous rejection of Dicky's proposal that I should call her "Mother."

She frowned slightly. "Forget what I said that day I came," she said quickly. "Call me Mother, that is, if you can."

For a moment I hesitated. The memory of her prejudice against me would not down. Then I had an illuminative look into the narrowness of my own soul. The sight did not please me. With a sudden resolve I bent down and kissed the cheek of my husband's mother.

"Of course, Mother," I said quietly.

It must have been two hours at least that I sat watching the sick woman. She left her hand in mine a long time, then, with a drowsy smile, she drew it away, turned over with her face to the wall, and fell into a restful sleep. I listened to her soft, regular breathing until the sunlight faded and the room darkened.

I must have dozed in my chair, for I did not hear Katie come in or go to the kitchen. The first thing that aroused me was a voice that I knew, the high-pitched tones of Lillian Gale Underwood.

"I tell you, Dicky-bird, it won't do. She's got to know the truth."

As Mrs. Underwood's shrill voice struck my ears, I sprang to my feet in dismay.

My first thought was of the sick woman over whom I was watching. Both Dr. Pettit and the nurse, Miss Sonnot, had warned us that excitement might be fatal to their patient.

And the one thing in the world that might be counted on to excite my mother-in-law was the presence of the woman whose voice I heard in conversation with my husband.

I rose noiselessly from my chair and went into the living room, closing the door after me. Then with my finger lifted warningly for silence I forced a smile of greeting to my lips as Lillian Underwood saw me and came swiftly toward me.

"Dicky's mother is asleep," I said in a low tone. "I am afraid I must ask you to come into the kitchen, for she awakens so easily."

Lillian nodded comprehendingly, but Dicky flushed guiltily as they followed me into the kitchen. Katie had left a few minutes before to run an errand for me.

Dicky's voice interrupted the words Lillian was about to speak to me. I hardly recognized it, hoarse, choked with feeling as it was.

"Lillian," he said, "you shall not do this. There is no need for you to bring all those old, horrible memories back. You have buried them and have had a little peace. If Madge is the woman I take her for she will be generous enough not to ask it, especially when I give her my word of honor that there is nothing in my past or yours which could concern her."

"You have the usual masculine idea of what might concern a woman," Lillian retorted tartly.

But I answered the appeal I had heard in my husband's voice even more than in his words.

"You do not need to tell me anything, Mrs. Underwood," I said gently, and at the words Dicky moved toward me quickly and put his arm around me.

I flinched at his touch. I could not help it. It was one thing to summon courage to refuse the confidence for which every tortured nerve was calling—it was another to bear the affectionate touch of the man whose whole being I had just heard cry out in attempt to protect this other woman.

Dicky did not notice any shrinking, but Mrs. Underwood saw it. I think sometimes nothing ever escapes her eyes. She came closer to me, gravely, steadily.

"You are very brave, Mrs. Graham, very kind, but it won't do. Dicky, keep quiet." She turned to him authoritatively as he started to speak. "You know how much use there is of trying to stop me when I make up my mind to anything."

She put one hand upon my shoulder.

"Dear child," she said earnestly, "will you trust me till tomorrow? I had thought that I must tell you right away, but your splendid generous attitude makes it possible for me to ask you this. I can see there is no place here where we can talk undisturbed. Besides, I must take no chance of your mother-in-law's finding out that I am here. Will you come to my apartment tomorrow morning any time after 10? Harry will be gone by then, and we can have the place to ourselves."

"I will be there at 10," I said gravely. I felt that her honesty and directness called for an explicit answer, and I gave it to her.

"Thank you." She smiled a little sadly, and then added: "Don't imagine all sorts of impossible things. It isn't a very pretty story, but I am beginning to hope that after you have heard it we may become very real friends."

Preposterous as her words seemed in the light of the things I had heard from the lips of my husband's mother, they gave me a sudden feeling of comfort.



XIX

LILLIAN UNDERWOOD'S STORY

"Well, I suppose we might as well get it over with."

Lillian Underwood and I sat in the big tapestried chairs on either side of the glowing fire in her library. She had instructed Betty, her maid, to bring her neither caller nor telephone message, until our conference should be ended. The two doors leading from the room were locked and the heavy velvet curtains drawn over them, making us absolutely secure from intrusion.

"I suppose so." The answer was banal enough, but it was physically impossible for me to say anything more. My throat was parched, my tongue thick, and I clenched my hands tightly in my lap to prevent their trembling.

Mrs. Underwood gave me a searching glance, then reached over and laid her warm, firm hand over mine.

"See here, my child," she said gently, "this will never do. Before I tell you this story there is something you must be sure of. Look at me. No matter what else you may think of me do you believe me to be capable of telling you a falsehood when a make a statement to you upon my honor?"

Her eyes met mine fairly and squarely. Mrs. Underwood has wonderful eyes, blue-gray, expressive. They shone out from the atrocious mask of make-up which she always uses, and I unreservedly accepted the message they carried to me.

"I am sure you would not deceive me," I returned quickly, and meant it.

"Thank you. Then before I begin my story I am going to assure you of one thing, upon—my—honor."

She spoke slowly, impressively, her eyes never wavering from mine.

"You have heard rumors about Dicky and me; you will hear things from me today which will show you that the rumors were justified in part, and yet—I want you to believe me when I tell you that there is nothing in any past association of your husband and myself which would make either of us ashamed to look you straight in the eyes."

I believed her! I would challenge anyone in the world to look into those clear, honest eyes and doubt their owner's truth.

There was a long minute when I could not speak. I had not known the full measure of what I feared until her words lifted the burden from my soul.

Then I had my moment, recognized it, rose to it. I leaned forward and returned the earnest gaze of the woman opposite to me.

"Dear Mrs. Underwood," I said. "Why tell me any more? I am perfectly satisfied with what you have just told me. Be sure that no rumors will trouble me again."

Her clasp of my hand tightened until my rings hurt my flesh. Into her face came a look of triumph.

"I knew it," she said jubilantly. "I could have banked on you. You're a big woman, my dear, and I believe we are going to be real friends."

She loosened her clasp of my hands, leaned back in her chair and looked for a long, meditative moment at the fire.

"You cannot imagine how much easier your attitude makes the telling of my story," she began finally.

"But I just assured you that there was no need for the telling," I interrupted.

"I know. But it is your right to know, and it will be far better if you are put in possession of the facts. It is an ugly story. I think I had better tell you the worst of it first."

I marvelled at the look that swept across her face. Bitter pain and humiliation were written there so plainly that I looked away. Then my eyes fell upon her strong, white, shapely hands which were resting upon the arms of the chair. They were strained, bloodless, where the fingers gripped the tapestried surface.

When she spoke, her voice was low, hurried, abashed. "Seven years ago," she said, "my first husband sued me for divorce, and named Dicky as a co-respondent."

I sprang from my seat.

"Oh, no, no, no," I cried, hardly knowing what I said. "Surely not. I remember reading the old story when you were married to Mr. Underwood, three years ago—I've always admired your work so much that I've read every line about you—and surely Dicky's name wasn't mentioned. I would have remembered it when I met him, I know."

"There, there." She was on her feet beside me and with a gentle yet compelling hand put me back in my chair. Her voice had the same tone a mother would use to a grieving child. "Dicky's name wasn't mentioned when the story was printed the last time, because at the time the divorce was granted, Mr. Morten withdrew the accusation that he had made against him."

"Why?" The question left my lips almost without volition. I sensed something tragic, full of meaning for me behind the statement she had made.

She did not answer me for a minute or two.

"I can only answer that question on your word of honor not to tell Dicky what I am going to tell you," she said. "It is something he suspects, but which I would never confirm."

She paused expectantly. "Upon honor, of course," I answered simply.

She rose and moved swiftly toward one of the built-in bookcases. I saw that she put her hand upon one of the sections and pulled upon it. To my astonishment it moved toward her, and I saw that behind it was a cleverly constructed wall safe. She turned the combination, opened the door and took from the safe an inlaid box which, as she came toward me, I saw was made of rare old woods.

She sat down again in the big chair and looked at the box musingly, tenderly. I leaned forward expectantly. Again I had the sense of tragedy near me.

Drawing the key from her dress she opened the box and took from it a miniature, gazed at it a minute, and then handed it to me.

"Oh, Mrs. Underwood," I exclaimed. "How exquisite."

The miniature was of the most beautiful child I had ever seen, a tiny girl of perhaps two years. She stood poised as if running to meet one, her baby arms outstretched. It was a picture to delight or break a mother's heart.

I looked up from the miniature to the face of the woman who had handed it to me.

"Yes," she answered my unspoken query, "my little daughter; my only child. She is the price I paid for Dicky's immunity from the scandal which the unjust man that I called husband brought upon me."

My first impulse was one of horror-stricken sympathy for her. Then came the reaction. A flaming jealousy enveloped me from head to foot.

"How she must have loved Dicky to do this for him!" The thought beat upon my brain like a sledge hammer.

"Don't think that, my dear, for it isn't true." I had not spoken, but with her almost uncanny ability to divine the thoughts of other people she had fathomed mine. "I was always fond of Dicky, but I never was in love with him."

"Then why did you make such a sacrifice?" I stammered.

"Why! There was absolutely no other way," she said, opening her wonderful eyes wide in amazement that I had not at once grasped her point of view. "Dicky was absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing, but through a combination of circumstances of which I shall tell you, my husband had gathered a show of evidence which would have won him the divorce if it had been presented."

"He bargained with me: I to give up all claim to the baby. He to withdraw Dicky's name, and all other charges except that of desertion. Thus Dicky was saved a scandal which would have followed and hampered him all his life, and I was spared the fastening of a shameful verdict upon me. Of course, everybody who read about the case and did not know me, believed me guilty anyway, but my friends stood by me gallantly, and that part of it is all right. But every time I look at that baby face I am tempted to wish that I had let honor, the righting of Dicky, everything go by the boards, and had taken my chance of having her, even if it were only part of the time."

Her voice was rough, uneven as she finished speaking, but that was the only evidence of the emotion which I knew must have her stretched upon the rack.

Right there I capitulated to Lillian Underwood. Always, through my dislike and distrust of her, there had struggled an admiration which would not down, even when I thought I had most cause to fear her.

But this revelation of the real bigness of the woman caught my allegiance and fixed it. She had sacrificed the thing which was most precious to her to keep her ideal of honor unsullied. I felt that I could never have made a similar sacrifice, but I mentally saluted her for her power to do it.

I realized, too, the reason for Dicky's deference to Mrs. Underwood, which had often puzzled and sometimes angered me. Once when she had given him a raking over for the temper he displayed toward me in her presence, he had said:

"You know I couldn't get angry at you, no matter what you said; I owe you too much."

I had wondered at the time what it was that my husband "owed" Mrs. Underwood. The riddle was solved for me at last.

I am not an impetuous woman, and I do not know how I ever mustered up courage to do it. But the sight of Lillian Underwood's face as she looked at her baby's picture was too much for me. Without any conscious volition on my part I found my arms around her, and her face pressed against my shoulder.

I expected a storm of grief, for I knew the woman had been holding herself in with an iron hand. But only a few convulsive movements of her shoulders betrayed her emotion and when she raised her face to mine her eyes were less tear-bedewed than my own.

Something stirred me to quick questioning.

"Oh, is there a chance of your having her again?"

"I am always hoping for it," she answered quietly. "When her father married again, several years ago—that was before my marriage to Harry—I hoped against hope that he would give her to me. For he knew—the hound—knew better than anybody else that all his vile charges were false."

Her eyes blazed, her voice was strident, her hands clasped and unclasped. Then, as if a string had been loosened, she sank back in her chair again.

"But he would not give her to me," she went on dully, "and he could not even if he would. For his mother, who has the child, is old and devoted to her. It would kill her to take Marion away from her."

"You saw my pink room?" she demanded abruptly.

I nodded. The memory of that rose-colored nest and the look in my hostess's eyes when on my other visit she had said she had prepared the room for a young girl was yet vivid.

"I spent weeks preparing it for her when I heard of her father's remarriage," she said, "When I finally realized that I could not have her, I lay ill for weeks in it. On my recovery I vowed that no one else but she or I should ever sleep there. I have another bedroom where I sleep most of the time. But sometimes I go in there and spend the night, and pretend that I have her little body snuggled up close to me just as it used to be."

The crackling of the logs in the grate was the only sound to be heard for many minutes.

With her elbow resting on the arm of her chair, her chin cupped in her hand, her whole body leaning toward the warmth of the fire, she sat gazing into the leaping flames as if she were trying to read in them the riddle of the future.

I patiently waited on her mood. That she would open her heart to me further I knew, but I did not wish to disturb her with either word or movement.

"I might as well begin at the beginning." There was a note in her voice that all at once made me see the long years of suffering which had been hers. "Only the beginning is so commonplace that it lacks interest. It is the record of a very mediocre stenographer with aspirations."

That she was speaking of herself her tone told me, but I was genuinely surprised. Mrs. Underwood was the last woman in the world one would picture as holding down a stenographer's position.

"I can't remember when I didn't have in the back of my brain the idea of learning to draw," she went on, "but it took years and years of uphill work and saving to get a chance. I was an orphan, with nobody to care whether I lived or died, and nothing but my own efforts to depend on. But I stuck to it, working in the daytime and studying evenings and holidays till at last I began to get a foothold, and then when I had enough to put by to risk it I went to Paris."

Her voice was as matter of fact as if she were describing a visit to the family butcher shop. But I visualized the busy, plucky years with their reward of Paris as if I had been a spectator of them.

"Of course, by the time I got there I was almost old enough to be the mother, or, at least, the elder sister of most of the boys and girls I met, and I had learned life and experience in a good, hard school. Some of the youngsters got the habit of coming to me with all their troubles, fancied or real. I made some stanch friends in those days, but never a stancher, truer one than Dicky Graham.

"Tell me, dear girl, when you were teaching those history classes, did any of your boy pupils fall in love with you?"

I answered her with an embarrassed little laugh. Her question called up memories of shy glances, gifts of flowers and fruit, boyish confidences—all the things which fall to the lot of any teacher of boys.

"Well, then, you will understand me when I tell you that in the studio days in Paris Dicky imagined himself quite in love with me."

There was something in her tone and manner which took all the sting out of her words for me. All the jealousy and real concern which I had spent on this old attachment of my husband for Mrs. Underwood vanished as I listened to her. She might have been Dicky's mother, speaking of his early and injudicious fondness for green apples.

"I shall always be proud of the way I managed Dicky that time." Her voice still held the amused maternal note. "It's so easy for an older woman to spoil a boy's life in a case like that if she's despicable enough to do it. But, you see, I was genuinely fond of Dicky, and yet not the least bit in love with him, and I was able, without his guessing it, to keep the management of the affair in my own hands. So when he woke up, as boys always do, to the absurdity of the idea, there was nothing in his recollections of me to spoil our friendship.

"Then there came the early days of my struggle to get a foothold in New York in my line. There were thousands of others like me. Six or seven of the strugglers had been my friends in Paris. We formed a sort of circle, "for offence and defence," Dicky called it; settled down near each other, and for months we worked and played and starved together. When one of us sold anything we all feasted while it lasted. I tell you, my dear, those were strenuous times but they had a zest of their own."

I saw more of the picture she was revealing than she thought I did. I could guess that the one who most often sold anything was the woman who was so calmly telling me the story of those early hardships. I knew that the dominant member of that little group of stragglers, the one who heartened them all, the one who would unhesitatingly go hungry herself if she thought a comrade needed it, was Lillian Underwood.

"And then I spoiled my life. I married."

"Don't misunderstand me," she hastened to say. "I do not mean that I believe all marriages are failures. I believe tremendously in married happiness, but I think I must be one of the women who are temperamentally unfitted to make any man happy."

Her tone was bitter, self-accusing.

"You cannot make me believe that," I said stoutly. "I would rather believe that you were very unwise in your choice of husbands."

She laughed ironically.

"Well, we will let it go at that! At any rate there is only one word that describes my first marriage. It was hell from start to finish."

The look on her face told me she was not exaggerating. It was a look, only graven by intense suffering.

"When the baby came my feeling for Will changed. He had worn me out. The love I had given him I lavished upon the child. Will's mother came to live with us—she had been drifting around miserably before—and while she failed me at the time of the divorce, yet she was a tower of strength to me during the baby's infancy. I was very fond of her and I think she sincerely liked me. But Will, her only son, could always make her believe black was white, as I later found out to my sorrow.

"With the vanishing of the hectic love I had felt for Will, things went more smoothly with me. I worked like a slave to keep up the expenses of the home and to lay by something for the baby's future. My husband was away so much that the boys and girls gradually came back to something like their old term of intimacy. I never gave the matter of propriety a thought. My mother-in-law, a baby and a maid, were certainly chaperons enough.

"Afterward I found out that my husband, equipped with his legal knowledge, had set all manner of traps for me, had bribed my maid, and diabolically managed to twist the most innocent visits of the boys of the old crowd to our home to his own evil meanings.

"Then came the crash. Dicky came in one Sunday afternoon and I saw at once that he was really ill. You know his carelessness. He had let a cold go until he was as near pneumonia as he could well be. A sleet storm was raging outside, and when Dicky, after shivering before the fire, started to go back to his studio, Will's mother, who liked Dicky immensely, joined with me in insisting that he must not go out at all, but to bed. Dicky was really too ill to care what we did with him, so we got him into bed, and I took care of him for two or three days until he was well enough to leave.

"Of course, the greater part of his care fell on me, for Will's mother was old and not strong. I am not going to tell you the accusations which my unspeakable husband made against me, or the affidavits which the maid was bribed to sign about Dicky and me. You can guess. Worst of all, Will's mother turned against me, not because of anything she had observed, but simply because her son told her I was guilty.

"'I never would have thought it of you, Lillian,' she said to me with the tears streaming down her wrinkled, old face. 'I never saw anything out of the way, but of course Will wouldn't lie. And I loved you so.'

"Poor old woman. Those last few words of affection made it easier for me to give the baby up to her when the time came. She idolizes Marion. She gives her the best of care, and I do not think she will teach her to hate me as Will would.

"But there has never been a moment since I kissed Marion and gave her into the arms of her grandmother that I have not known exactly how she was treated," she said. "I have made it my business to know, and I have paid liberally for the knowledge. You see, about the time of the divorce Mr. Morten had a legacy left him, so that life has been easy for him financially. His mother had always kept a maid. Every servant she has had has been in my employ. There has scarcely been a day since I lost my baby that from some unobserved place I have not seen her in her walks. I know every line of her face, every curve of her body, every trick of movement and expression. I shall know how to win her love when the time comes, never fear."

Her voice was dauntless, but her face mirrored the anguish that must be her daily companion.

One thing about her recital jarred upon me. This paying of servants, this furtive espionage was not in keeping with the high resolve that had led the mother to "keep her word" to the man who had ruined her life. And yet—and yet—I dared not judge her. In her place I could not imagine what I would have done.

One thing I knew. Never again would I doubt Lillian Underwood. The ghost of the past romance between my husband and the woman before me was laid for all time, never to trouble me again. Remembering the sacrifice she had made for Dicky, considering the gallant fight against circumstances she had waged since her girlhood, I felt suddenly unworthy of the friendship she had so warmly offered me.

I turned to her, trying to find words, which should fittingly express my sentiments, but she forestalled me with a kaleidoscopic change of manner that bewildered me.

"Enough of horrors," she said, springing up and giving a little expressive shake of her shoulders as if she were throwing a weight from them. "I'm going to give you some luncheon."

"Oh, please!" I put up a protesting hand, but she was across the room and pressing a bell before I could stop her.

I thought I understood. The grave of her past life was closed again. She had opened it because she wished me to know the truth concerning the old garbled stories about herself and Dicky. Having told me everything, she had pushed the grisly thing back into its sepulchre again and had sealed it. She would not refer to it again.

One thing puzzled me, something to which she had not referred—why had she married Harry Underwood? Why, after the terrible experience of her first marriage, had she risked linking her life with an unstable creature like the man who was now her husband?

I put all questionings aside, however, and tried to meet her brave, gay mood.



XX

LITTLE MISS SONNOT'S OPPORTUNITY

My mother-in-law's convalescence was as rapid as the progress of her sudden illness had been. By the day that I gave my first history lecture before the Lotus Study Club she was well enough to dismiss Dr. Pettit with, one of her sudden imperious speeches, and to make plans that evening for the welcoming and entertaining of her daughter Harriet and her famous son-in-law Dr. Edwin Braithwaite, who were expected next day on their way to Europe, where Doctor was to take charge of a French hospital at the front.

That night I could not sleep. The exciting combination of happenings effectually robbed me of rest. I tried every device I could think of to go to sleep, but could not lose myself in even a doze. Finally, in despair, I rose cautiously, not to awaken Dicky, and slipping on my bathrobe and fur-trimmed mules, made my way into the dining-room.

Turning on the light, I looked around for something to read until I should get sleepy.

"What is the matter, Mrs. Graham? Are you ill?"

Miss Sonnet's soft, voice sounded just behind me. As I turned I thought again, as I had many times before, how very attractive the little nurse was. She had on a dark blue negligee of rough cloth, made very simply, but which covered her night attire completely, while her feet, almost as small as a child's, were covered with fur-trimmed slippers of the same color as the negligee. Her abundant hair was braided in two plaits and hung down to her waist.

"You look like a sleepy little girl," I said impulsively.

"And you like a particularly wakeful one," she returned, mischievously. "I am glad you are not ill. I feared you were when I heard you snap on the light."

"No, you did not waken me. In fact, I have been awake nearly an hour. I was just about to come out and rob the larder of a cracker and a sip of milk in the hope that I might go to sleep again when I heard you."

"Splendid!" I ejaculated, while Miss Sonnot looked at me wonderingly. "Can your patient hear us out here?"

"If you could hear her snore you would be sure she could not," Miss Sonnot smiled. "And I partly closed her door when I left. She is safe for hours."

"Then we will have a party," I declared triumphantly, "a regular boarding school party."

"Then on to the kitchen!" She raised one of her long braids of hair and waved it like a banner. We giggled like fifteen-year-old school girls as we tiptoed our way into the kitchen, turned on the light and searched refrigerator, pantry, bread and cake boxes for food.

"Now for our plunder," I said, as we rapidly inventoried the eatables we had found. Bread, butter, a can of sardines, eggs, sliced bacon and a dish of stewed tomatoes.

"I wish we had some oysters or cheese; then we could stir up something in the chafing dish," I said mournfully.

"Do you know, I believe I have a chafing dish recipe we can use in a scrap book which I always carry with me," responded Miss Sonnot. "It is in my suit case at the foot of my couch. I'll be back in a minute."

She noiselessly slipped into the living room and returned almost instantly with a substantially bound book in her hands. She sat down beside me at the table and opened the book.

"I couldn't live without this book," she said extravagantly. "In it I have all sorts of treasured clippings and jottings. The things I need most I have pasted in. The chafing dish recipes are in an envelope. I just happened to have them along."

She was turning the pages as she spoke. On one page, which she passed by more hurriedly than the others, were a number of Kodak pictures. I caught a flash of one which made my heart beat more quickly. Surely I had a print from the same negative in my trunk.

The tiny picture was a photograph of Jack Bickett or I was very much mistaken.

What was it doing in the scrap book of Miss Sonnot?

I put an unsteady hand out to prevent her turning the page.

It was Jack Bickett's photograph. I schooled my voice to a sort of careless surprise:

"Why! Isn't this Jack Bickett?"

She started perceptibly. "Yes. Do you know him?"

"He is the nearest relative I have," I returned quickly, "a distant cousin, but brought up as my brother."

Her face flushed. Her eyes shone with interest.

"Oh! then you must be his Margaret?" she cried.

As the words left Miss Sonnot's lips she gazed at me with a half-frightened little air as if she regretted their utterance.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Graham," she said contritely; "you must think I have taken leave of my senses. But I have heard so much about you."

"From Mr. Bickett?" My head was whirling. I had never heard Jack speak the name of "Sonnot." Indeed, I would never have known he had met her, save for the accidental opening of her scrap book to his picture when she and I were searching for chafing dish recipes.

"Oh! No, indeed. I have never seen Mr. Bickett myself."

A rosy embarrassed flush stole over her face as she spoke. Her eyes were starry. Through my bewilderment came a thought which I voiced.

"That is his loss then. He would think so if he could see you now."

She laughed confusedly while the rosy tint of her cheeks deepened.

"I must explain to you," she said simply. "I have never seen Mr. Bickett, but my brother is one of his friends. They used to correspond, and I enjoyed his letters as much as Mark did. I think his is a wonderful personality, don't you?"

"Naturally," I returned, a trifle dryly. The little nurse was revealing more than she dreamed. There was romantic admiration in every note in her voice. I was not quite sure that I liked it.

But I put all selfish considerations down with an iron hand and smiled in most friendly fashion at her.

"Isn't it wonderful that after hearing so much of each other we should meet in this way?" I said heartily. "If only our brothers were here."

Miss Sonnet's face brightened again. "Is Mr. Bickett in this country? " she asked, her voice carefully nonchalant. "I have not heard anything about him for two or three years."

"He sailed for France a week ago," I answered slowly. "He intends to join the French engineering corps."

There was a long moment of silence. Then Miss Sonnot spoke slowly, and there was a note almost of reverence in her voice.

"That is just what he would do," and then, impetuously, "how I envy him!"

"Envy him?" I repeated incredulously.

"Yes, indeed." Her voice was militant, her eyes shining, her face aglow. "How I wish I were a man ever since this war started! I am just waiting for a good chance to join a hospital unit, but I do not happen to know any surgeon who has gone, and of course they all pick their own nurses. But my chance will come. I am sure of it, and then I am going to do my part. Why! my great-grandfather was an officer in Napoleon's army. I feel ashamed not to be over there."

* * * * *

I saw very little of Dicky's sister and her husband during the week they spent in New York before sailing for France. True, Harriet spent some portion of every day with her mother, but she ate at our table only once, always hurrying back to the hotel to oversee the menu of her beloved Edwin.

Reasoning that in a similar situation I should not care for the presence of an outsider, I left the mother and daughter alone together as much as I could without appearing rude. I think they both, appreciated my action, although, with their customary reserve, they said very little to me.

Dr. Braithwaite came twice during the week to see us, each time making a hurried call. Harriet appeared to wish to impress us with the importance of these visits from so busy and distinguished a man. But the noted surgeon himself was simple and unaffected in his manner.

One thing troubled me. I had done nothing, said nothing to further Miss Sonnot's desire to go to France as a nurse. She had left us the day after Dicky's sister and brother-in-law arrived, left with the admiration and good wishes of us all. The big surgeon himself, after watching her attention to his mother-in-law upon the day of arrival, made an approving comment.

"Good nurse, that," he had said. I took the first opportunity to repeat his words to the little nurse, who flushed with pleasure. I knew that I ought to at least inquire of the big surgeon or his wife about the number of nurses he was taking with him, but there seemed no fitting opportunity, and—I did not make one.

I did not try to explain to myself the curious disinclination I felt to lift a hand toward the sending of Miss Sonnot to the French hospitals. But every time I thought of the night she had told me of her wish I felt guilty.

Jack was already "somewhere in France." If Miss Sonnot entered the hospital service, there was a possibility that they might meet.

I sincerely liked and admired Miss Sonnot. My brother-cousin had been the only man in my life until Dicky swept me off my feet with his tempestuous wooing. My heart ought to have leaped at the prospect of their meeting and its possible result. But I felt unaccountably depressed at the idea, instead.

The last day of the Braithwaites' stay Harriet came unusually early to see her mother.

"I can stay only a few minutes this morning, mother," she explained, as she took off her heavy coat. "I know," in answer to the older woman's startled protest. "It is awful this last day, too. I'll come back toward night, but I must get back to Edwin this morning. He is so annoyed. One of his nurses has fallen ill at the last moment and cannot go. He has to secure another good one immediately, that he may get her passport attended to in time for tomorrow's sailing. And he will not have one unless he interviews her himself. I left him eating his breakfast and getting ready to receive a flock of them sent him by some physicians he knows. I must hurry back to help him through."

Miss Sonnet's opportunity had come! I knew it, knew also that I must speak to my sister-in-law at once about her. But she had finished her flying little visit and was putting on her coat before I finally forced myself to broach the subject.

"Mrs. Braithwaite"—to my disgust I found my voice trembling—"I think I ought to tell you that Miss Sonnot, the nurse your mother had, wishes very much to enter the hospital service. She could go tomorrow, I am sure. And I remember your husband spoke approvingly of her."

My sister-in-law rushed past me to the telephone.

"The very thing!" She threw the words over her shoulder as she took down the receiver. "Thank you so much." Then, as she received her connection, she spoke rapidly, enthusiastically.

"Edwin, I have such good news for you. Dicky's wife thinks that little Miss Sonnot who nursed mother could go tomorrow. She said while she was here that she wanted to enter the hospital service. Yes. I thought you'd want her. All right. I'll see to it right away and telephone you. By the way, Edwin, if she can go, you won't need me this forenoon, will you? That's good. I can stay with mother, then. Take care of yourself, dear. Good-by."

She hung up the receiver and turned to me.

"Can you reach her by 'phone right away, and if she can go tell her to go to the Clinton at once and ask for Dr. Braithwaite?"

I paid a mental tribute to my sister-in-law's energy as I in my turn took down the telephone receiver. I realized how much wear and tear she must save her big husband.

"Miss Sonnot!" I could not help being a bit dramatic in my news. "Can you sail for France tomorrow? One of Dr. Braithwaite's nurses is ill, and you may have her place, if you wish."

There was a long minute of silence, and then the little nurse's voice sounded in my ears. It was filled with awe and incredulity.

"If I wish!" and then, after a pregnant pause, "Surely, I can go. Where do I learn the details?"

I gave her full directions and hung up the receiver with a sigh.

She came to see me before she sailed, and after she had left me, I went into my bedroom, locked the door, and let the tears come which I had been forcing back. I did not know what was the matter with me. I felt a little as I did once long before when a cherished doll of my childhood had been broken beyond all possibility of mending. Unreasonable as the feeling was, it was as if a curtain had dropped between me and any part of my life that lay behind me.



XXI

LIFE'S JOG-TROT AND A QUARREL

Life went at a jog-trot with me for a long time after the departure for France of the Braithwaites and Miss Sonnot.

My mother-in-law missed her daughter, Mrs. Braithwaite, sorely. I believe if it had not been for her pride in her brilliant daughter and her famous son-in-law she would have become actually ill with fretting. I found my hands full in devising ways to divert her mind and planning dishes to tempt her delicate appetite.

Because of her frailty and consequent inability to do much sightseeing, or, indeed, to go far from the house, Dicky and I spent a very quiet winter.

Our evenings away from home together did not average one a week. And Dicky very rarely went anywhere without me.

"What a Darby and Joan we are getting to be!" he remarked one night as we sat one on each side of the library table, reading. His mother, as was her custom, had gone to bed early in the evening.

"Yes! Isn't it nice?" I returned, smiling at him.

"Ripping!" Dicky agreed enthusiastically. Then, reflectively, "Funniest thing about it is the way I cotton to this domestic stunt. If anyone had told me before I met you that I should ever stand for this husband-reading-to-knitting-wife sort of thing I should have bought him a ticket to Matteawan, pronto."

He stopped and frowned heavily at me, in mimic disapproval.

"Picture all spoiled," he declared, sighing. "You are not knitting. Why, oh, why are you not knitting?"

"Because I never shall knit," I returned, laughing, "at least not in the evening while you are reading. That sort of thing never did appeal to me. Either the wife who has to knit or sew or darn in the evening is too inefficient to get all her work done in daylight, or she has too much work to do. In the first case, her husband ought to teach her efficiency; in the second place, he ought to help do the sewing or the darning. Then they could both read."

"Listen to the feminist?" carolled Dicky; then with mock severity: "Of course, I am to infer, madam, that my stockings are all properly darned?"

"Your inference is eminently correct," demurely. "Your mother darned them today."

What I had told him was true. His mother had seen me looking over the stockings after they were washed, and had insisted on darning Dicky's. I saw that she longed to do some little personal service for her boy, and willingly handed them over.

Dicky threw back his head and laughed heartily. Then his face sobered, and he came round to my side of the table and sat down on the arm of my chair.

"Speaking of mother," he said, rumpling my hair caressingly, "I want to tell you, sweetheart, that you've made an awful hit with me the way you've taken care of her. Nobody knows better than I how trying she can be, and you've been just as sweet and kind to her as if she were the most tractable person on earth."

He put his arms around me and bent his face to mine.

"Pretty nice and comfy this being married to each other, isn't it?"

"Very nice, indeed," I agreed, nestling closer to him.

My heart echoed the words. In fact, it seemed almost too good to be true, this quiet domestic cove into which our marital bark had drifted. The storms we had weathered seemed far past. Dicky's jealousy of my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett; my unhappiness over Lillian Underwood—those tempestuous days surely were years ago instead of months.

Now Jack was "somewhere in France," and I had a queer little premonition that somewhere, somehow, his path would cross that of Miss Sonnot, the little nurse, who had gone with Dr. Braithwaite's, expedition, and who for years had cherished a romantic ideal of my brother-cousin, although she had never met him.

Lillian Underwood was my sworn friend. With characteristic directness she had cut the Gordian knot of our misunderstanding by telling me, against Dicky's protests, all about the old secret which her past and that of my husband shared. After her story, with all that it revealed of her sacrifice and her fidelity to her own high ideals, there never again would be a doubt of her in my mind. I was proud of her friendship, although, because of my mother-in-law's prejudice against them, Dicky and I could not have the Underwoods at our home.

Our meetings, therefore, were few. But I had an odd little feeling of safety and security whenever I thought of her. I knew if any terrible trouble ever came to me I should fly to her as if she were my sister.

My work at the Lotus Study Club was going along smoothly. At home Katie was so much more satisfactory than the maids I had seen in other establishments that I shut my eyes to many little things about which I knew my mother-in-law would have been most captious.

But my mother-in-law's acerbity was softened by her weakness. We grew quite companionable in the winter days when Dicky's absence at the studio left us together. Altogether I felt that life had been very good to me.

So the winter rolled away, and almost before we knew it the spring days came stealing in from the South, bringing to me their urgent call of brown earth and sprouting things.

I was not the only one who listened to the message of spring. Mother Graham grew restless and used all of her meagre strength in drives to the parks and walks to a nearby square where the crocuses were just beginning to wave their brave greeting to the city.

The warmer days affected Dicky adversely. He seemed a bit distrait, displayed a trifle of his earlier irritability, and complained a great deal about the warmth of the apartment.

"I tell you I can't stand this any longer," he said one particularly warm evening in April, as he sank into a chair, flinging his collar in one direction and his necktie in another. "I'd rather be in the city in August than in these first warm days of spring. What do you say to moving into the country for the summer? Our month is up here the first, anyway, and I am perfectly willing to lose any part of the month's rent if we only can get away."

"But, Dicky," I protested, "unless we board, which I don't think any of us would like to do, how are we going to find a house, to say nothing of getting settled in so short a time?"

To my surprise, Dicky hesitated a moment before answering. Then, flushing, he uttered the words which brought my little castle of contentment grumbling about me and warned me that my marital problems were not yet all solved.

"Why, you see, there won't be any bother about a house. Miss Draper has found a perfectly bully place not far from her sister's home."

"Miss Draper has found a house for us!"

I echoed Dicky's words in blank astonishment. His bit of news was so unexpected, amazement was the only feeling that came to me for a moment or two.

"Well, what's the reason for the awful astonishment?" demanded Dicky, truculently. "You look as if a bomb had exploded in your vicinity."

He expressed my feeling exactly. I knew that Miss Draper had become a fixture in his studio, acting as his secretary as well as his model, and pursuing her art studies under his direction. But his references to her were always so casual and indifferent that for months I had not thought of her at all. And now I found that Dicky had progressed to such a degree of intimacy with her that he not only wished to move to the village which she called home, but had allowed her to select the house in which we were to live.

I might be foolish, overwrought, but all at once I recognized in Dicky's beautiful protege a distinct menace to my marital happiness. I knew I ought to be most guarded in my reply to my husband, but I am afraid the words of my answer were tipped with the venom of my feeling toward the girl.

"I admit I am astonished," I replied coldly. "You see, I did not know it was the custom in your circle for an artist's model to select a house for his wife and mother. You must give me time to adjust myself to such a bizarre state of things."

I was so furious myself that I did not realize how much my answer would irritate Dicky. He sprang to his feet with an oath and turned on me the old, black angry look that I had not seen for months.

"That's about the meanest slur I ever heard," he shouted. "Just because a girl works as a model every other woman thinks she has the right to cast a stone at her, and put on a how-dare-you-brush-your-skirt-against-mine sort of thing. You worked for a living yourself not so very long ago. I should think you would have a little Christian charity in your heart for any other girl who worked."

"It strikes me that there is a slight difference between the work of a high school instructor in history, a specialist in her subject, and the work of an artist's model," I returned icily. "But, laying all that aside, I should have considered myself guilty of a very grave breach of good taste if I had ventured to select a house for the wife of my principal, unasked and unknown to her."

"Cut out the heroics, and come down to brass tacks," Dicky snarled vulgarly. "Why don't you be honest and say you're jealous of the poor girl? I'll bet, if the truth were known, it isn't only the house she selected you'd balk at. I'll bet you wouldn't want to go to Marvin at all for the summer, regardless that I've spent many a comfortable week in that section, and like it better than any other summer place I know."

Through all my anger at Dicky, my disgust at his coarseness, came the conviction that he had spoken the truth. I was jealous of Grace Draper, there was no use denying the fact to myself, however strenuously I might try to hide the thing from Dicky. I told myself that I hated Marvin because it held this girl, that instead of spending the summer there I wished I might never see the place again.

I was angrier than ever when the knowledge of my own emotion forced itself upon me, angry with myself for being so silly, angry with Dicky for having brought such provocation upon me! I let my speech lash out blindly, not caring what I said:

"You are wrong in one thing—right in another. I am not jealous of Miss Draper. To tell you the truth, I do not care enough about what you do to be jealous of you. But I would not like to live in Marvin for this season—I never counted in my list of friends a woman who possesses neither good breeding nor common sense, and I do not propose to begin with Miss Draper."

Dicky stared at me for a moment, his face dark and distorted with passion. Then, springing to his feet, he picked up his collar and tie and went into his room. Returning with fresh ones, he snatched his hat and stick and rushed to the door. As he slammed it after him I heard another oath, one this time coupled with a reference to me. I sank back in the big chair weak and trembling.

"Well, you have made a mess of it!" My mother-in-law's voice, cool and cynical, sounded behind me. I felt like saying something caustic to her, but there was something in her tones that stopped me. It was not criticism of me she was expressing, rather sympathy. Accustomed as I was to every inflection of her voice, I realized this, and accordingly held my tongue until she had spoken further.

"I'll admit you've had enough to make any woman lose her control of herself," went on Dicky's mother, with the fairness which I had found her invariably to possess in anything big, no matter how petty and fussy she was over trifles. "But you ought to know Richard better than to take that way with him. Give Richard his head and he soon tires of any of the thousand things he proposes doing from time to time. Oppose him, ridicule him, make him angry, and he'll stick to his notion as a dog to a bone."

She turned and walked into her own room again. I sat miserably huddled in the big chair, by turn angry at my husband and remorseful over my own hastiness.

"Vot I do about dinner, Missis Graham?" Katie's voice was subdued, sympathetic and respectful. I realized that she had heard every word of our controversy. The knowledge made my reply curt.

"Keep it warm as long as you can. I will tell you when to serve it."

Katie stalked out, muttering something about the dinner being spoiled, but I paid no heed to her. My thoughts were too busy with conjectures and forebodings of the future to pay any attention to trifles.

The twilight deepened into darkness. I was just nerving myself to summon Katie and tell her to serve dinner when the door opened and Dicky's rapid step crossed the room. He switched on the light, and then coming over to me, lifted me bodily out of my chair.

"Was the poor little girl jealous?" he drawled, with his face pressed close to mine. "Well, she shall never have to be jealous again. We won't live in Marvin, naughty old town, full of beautiful models. We'll just go over to Hackensack or some nice respectable place like that."

At first my heart had leaped with victory. Dicky had come back, and he was not angry. Then as his lips sought mine, and I caught his breath, my victory turned to ashes. The regret or repentance which had driven my husband back to my arms had not come from his heart but from the depths of a whiskey glass.



XXII

AN AMAZING DISCOVERY

It was two days after our quarrel over Grace Draper and her selection of a summer home for us before Dicky again broached the subject of leaving the city for the summer.

"By the way," he said, as carelessly as if the subject had never been a bone of contention between us, "that house I was speaking of the other night; the one Miss Draper thought we would like, has been rented, so we will have to look for something else."

I had no idea how he had managed to get rid of taking the house after his protege had gone to the trouble of hunting one up, nor did I care. I told myself that as the girl's insolent assurance in selecting a house for me had been put down I could afford to be magnanimous. So I smiled at Dicky and said with an ease which I was far from feeling:

"But there must be other places in Marvin that are desirable. That day we were out there I caught glimpses of streets that must be beautiful in summer."

Into Dicky's eyes flashed a look of tender pleasure that warmed me. Taking advantage of his mother's absorption in her fish he threw me a kiss. I knew that I had pleased him wonderfully by tacitly agreeing to go to Marvin, and that our quarrel was to him as if it had never been. I wish I had his mercurial temperament. Long after I have forgiven a wrong done to me, or an unpleasant experience, the bitter memory of it comes back to torment me.

"That's my bully girl!" was all Dicky said in reply, but when the baked fish had been discussed and we were eating our salad he looked up, his eyes twinkling.

"This green stuff reminds me that if I'm going to get my garden sass planted this year or you want any flower beds, we'll have to get busy. Can you run out to Marvin with me tomorrow morning and look around? We ought to be able to find something we want. Real estate agents are as thick as fleas around that section."

We made an early start the next morning, Mother Graham, with characteristic energy, spurring up Katie with the breakfast, and successfully routing Dicky from the second nap he was bound to take. I had been up since daylight, for it was a perfect spring morning, and I was anxious to be afield.

As we neared the entrance of the Long Island station I thought of the first trip we had taken to Marvin, and the unpleasantness which had marred the day, and I plucked Dicky's sleeve timidly.

"Dicky!" I swallowed hard and stopped short.

He adroitly swung me across the street into the safety of the runway leading down into the station before he spoke.

"Well, what's on your conscience?" He smiled down at me roguishly. "You look as if you were going to confess to a murder at least."

"Not that bad," I smiled faintly. "But oh, Dicky, if I promise to try not to say anything irritating today, will you promise not to, either?"

"Sure as you're born," Dicky returned cheerfully. "Don't want to spoil the day, eh?"

"It's such a heavenly day," I sighed. "I feel as if I couldn't stand it to have anything mar it."

As we sat in the train that bore us to Marvin Dicky outlined some of his plans for the summer.

"There are two or three of the fellows who come down here summers who I know will be glad to go Dutch on a motor boat," he said. "We can take the bulliest trips, way out to deserted sand islands, where the surf is the best ever. We'll take along a tent and spend the night there sometime, or we can stretch out in the boat. Then we must see if we can get hold of some horses. Do you ride? Think of it! We've been married months, and I don't know yet whether you ride or not!"

"No, I don't ride, but oh, how I've always wanted to!" I returned with enthusiasm. Then, with a sudden qualm, "But all that will be terribly expensive, won't it?"

"Not so awful," Dicky said, smiling down at me. "But even if it is, I guess we can stand it. I've had some cracking good orders lately. We'll have one whale of a summer."

My heart beat high with happiness. Surely, with all these plans for me, my husband's thoughts could not be much occupied with his beautiful model. As he lifted me down to the station platform at Marvin I looked with friendliness at the dingy, battered old railroad station which I remembered, at the defiant sign near it which trumpeted in large type, "Don't judge the town by the station," and the winding main street of the village, which, when I had visited Marvin before, Dicky had wished to show me.

Upon that other visit our first sight of Grace Draper and Dicky's interest in her had spoiled the trip for me. I had insisted upon going back without seeing some of the things Dicky had planned to show me, and I had disliked the thought of the town ever since. But with Dicky's loving plans for my happiness dazzling me, I felt a touch of the glamour with which he invested the place in my eyes. I caught at his hand in an unwonted burst of tenderness.

"Let's walk down that old winding street which you told me about last winter," I said. "I've wanted to see it ever since you spoke about it."

"We'll probably motor down it instead," he grinned. "There's a real estate office just opposite here, and I see the agent's flivver in front of the door, where he stands just inside his office. The spider and the fly, eh, Madge? Well, Mr. Spider, here are two dear little flies for you!"

"Oh, Dicky!" I dragged at his arm in protest. "Don't spoil our first view of that street by whirling through it in a car. Let's saunter down it first and then come back to the real estate man."

"You have a gleam of human intelligence, sometimes, don't you?" Dicky inquired banteringly. Then he took my arm to help me across the rough places in the country road.

We had almost reached the door of the office when Dicky caught sight of a plainly dressed woman coming toward us. I heard him catch his breath, his grasp on my arm tightened, and with an indescribable agile movement he fairly bolted into the real estate office, dragging me with him.

"I'll explain later," he said in my ear. "Just follow my lead now."

As he turned to the rotund little real estate agent, who came forward to greet us, a look of surprise on his round face, I looked through the window at the woman from whose sight he had dodged.

Then I felt that I needed an explanation, indeed.

For the woman whose eyes my husband so evidently wished to avoid was Mrs. Gorman, Grace Draper's sister.

* * * * *

So I was to live in a house of Grace Draper's choosing, after all!

This was the thought that came most forcibly to me when Mr. Brennan, the owner of the house Dicky had impetuously decided to rent, told us that Miss Draper had looked over the place for an artist friend, and that she would have taken it only for finding another house nearer her own home.

I was so absorbed in my own thoughts that I did not at first notice Dicky's embarrassment when Mr. Brennan asked him if he knew Grace Draper. It was only when the man, who had all the earmarks of a gossiping countryman, repeated the question, that I realized Dicky's confusion.

"Did you say you knew her?"

"Yes, I know her; she works in my studio," remarked Dicky, shortly.

"Oh!" The exclamation had the effect of a long-drawn whistle. "Then you probably were the artist friend she spoke of."

"I probably was." Dicky's tone was grim. I knew how near his temper was to exploding, and the look which I beheld on the face of Mr. Birdsall, the little real estate agent, galvanized me into action.

"Dear, what do you suppose led Grace to think we would like that other place better than this?" I flashed a tender little smile at Dicky. "Of course we would like to be nearer her, but this is not very far from her home, and it is so much better, isn't it?"

Dicky took the cue without a tremor.

"Why, I suppose she thought you would find this house too big for you to look after," he replied in a matter-of-fact way.

"That was awful dear and thoughtful of her," I murmured, careful to keep my voice at just the right pitch of friendliness toward the absent Grace, "but I don't think this will be too much, for we can shut up the rooms we don't need."

I had the satisfaction of seeing the puzzled looks of Mr. Brennan and Mr. Birdsall change into an evident readjustment of their ideas concerning my husband and Grace Draper. But I did not relax my iron hold upon myself. I knew if I dared let myself down for an instant angry tears would rush to my eyes.

"When did you say we could move in?" I turned to Mr. Brennan, determined to get away from the subject of Grace Draper as quickly as possible.

"Today, if you want it."

"No," returned Dicky, "but we will want it soon. When do you think we can move?" He turned to me.

* * * * *

I spent three busy days at the Brennan place. There was much to be done both inside and outside the house. After the first day, Katie did not return with me, as my mother-in-law needed her in the apartment. But I engaged another woman with the one I had for the work in the house and put the grinning William in charge of an old man I had secured to clean up the grounds and make the garden.

I soon found that I had a treasure in Mr. Jones, who was a typical old Yankee farmer, a wizened little man with chin whiskers. He could only give me a day or two occasionally, as he was old and confided to me that he was subject to "the rheumatics." But while I was there he ploughed and harrowed and planted the garden, cleared the rubbish away, and made me innumerable flower beds, keeping an iron hand over the irresponsible William, whose grin gradually faded as he was forced to do some real work for his day's wages.

A riotous and extravagant hour in a seed and bulb store resulted in my getting all the flower favorites I had loved in my childhood. I also bought the seeds of all vegetables which Dicky and I liked, and a few more, and put them in Mr. Jones's capable hands.

If there was a variety of vegetables or flower seeds which looked attractive in the seedman's catalogue, and which remained unbought, it was the fault of the salesman, for I conscientiously tried to select every one. I planned the location of a few of the beds, and then confided to Mr. Jones the rest of the outdoor work, knowing that he could finish it after my return to the city.

Mr. Birdsall, the agent, was very tractable about the kitchen, sending men the second day to paint it. So at the end of the third day, when I turned the key in the lock of the front door, I was conscious that the house was as clean as soap and water and hard work could make it, that the grounds were in order, and the growing things I loved on their way to greet me.

I fancy it was high time things were accomplished, for in some way I had caught a severe cold. At least that was the way I diagnosed my complaint. My throat seemed swollen, my head ached severely, and each bone and muscle in my body appeared to have its separate pain. When I reached the apartment I felt so ill that I undressed and went to bed at once.