"Then, half-shyly, she spoke, and her voice matched her eyes.

"'You are Mr. Bickett, are you not, Mrs. Graham's cousin?'

"For a moment I did not realize that 'Mrs. Graham' was Margaret. But that gave me no clue to the identity of the girl. Then all at once it came to me.

"'I know you now,' I said. 'You are Mark Earle's little sister, Katherine.'"

So they had met at last, Jack Bickett, my brother-cousin, and Katherine Sonnot, the little nurse who had taken care of my mother-in-law, and whom I had learned to love as a dear friend.

Was I glad or sorry, I wondered, as I picked up Jack's letter again that I had crushed any feeling I might have had in the matter, and had spoken the word to Dr. Braithwaite that resulted in Katharine's joining the eminent surgeon's staff of nurses? It seemed a pity to have these two meet only to be torn apart so soon by death.

"I cannot begin to tell you how delighted I was when we recognized each other. You can imagine over here that to one American the meeting with another American, especially if both have the same friends, is an event. Luckily, Miss Sonnot was just about to have an afternoon off when we met, and if she had an engagement—which she denied—she was kind enough to break it for me. I need not tell you that I spent the most delightful afternoon I have had since coming over here.

"You can be sure that I at once exerted all the influence I had through my friend, Caillard, and his friend in the hospital to secure as much free time for Miss Sonnot as possible for the time I was to be on furlough. It is like getting home after being away so long to talk to this brave, sensible, beautiful young girl—for she deserves all of the adjectives."

In the two letters which were the last ones numbered by Mrs. Stewart, Jack spoke again and again of the little nurse. Almost the last line of his last letter, written after he returned to the front, spoke of her.

"Little Miss Sonnot and I correspond," he wrote, "and you can have no idea how much good her letters do me. They are like fresh, sweet breezes glowing through the miasma of life in the trenches."

I folded the letters, put them back into their envelopes, and arranged them as Mrs. Stewart had given them to me. When she came back into the room she found me still holding them and staring into the fire.

"Did you read them all?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"Don't you think those last ones sounded as if he were really getting interested in that little nurse?" she demanded.

There was a peculiar intonation in her voice which told me that in her own queer little way she was trying to punish me for my failure to come to see her oftener with inquiries about Jack. She evidently thought that my vanity would be piqued at the thought of Jack becoming interested in any other woman after his life-long devotion to me.

But I flatter myself that my voice was absolutely non-committal as I answered her.

"Yes, I do," I agreed, "and what a tragedy it seems that he should be snatched away from the prospect of happiness."

The words were sincere. I was sure.

And yet—



XXXVII

A CHANGE IN LILLIAN UNDERWOOD

"Well, children, have you made any plans for Dicky's birthday yet?"

I nearly fell off my chair in astonishment at the friendliness in my mother-in-law's tones. She had been sulky ever since we had come home from our autumn outing in the Catskills, a sulkiness caused by her resentment of what she chose to consider the indiscreet interest taken in me by Robert Gordon, the mysterious millionaire whom I had discovered to be an old friend of my parents. I shrewdly suspected, however, that her continued resentment was more because Dicky chose to take my part in the matter against her, than because of any real feeling toward Mr. Gordon.

Nearly a year's experience, however, had taught me how best to manage my mother-in-law. When she indulged herself in one of her frequent "tantrums" I adopted a carefully courteous, scrupulously formal attitude toward her, and dismissed her from my mind. Thus I saved myself much worry and irritation, and deprived her of the pleasure of a quarrel, something which I knew she would be glad to bring on sometimes for the sheer pleasure of combat.

Her question was so sudden, her cordiality so surprising, that I could frame no answer. Instead I looked helplessly at Dicky. To tell the truth, I rather distrusted this sudden amiability. From past experiences, I knew that when Mother Graham made a sudden change from sulkiness to cheerfulness, she had some scheme under way.

Dicky's answer was prompt.

"That's entirely up to Madge, mother," he said, and smiled at me.

Although his mother tried hard she could not keep the acerbity out of her tones as she turned to me. She always resented any deference of Dicky to my opinion.

"Well, as Richard has no opinion of his own, what are your plans, Margaret?"

"Why, I have made none so far," I stammered, wishing with all my heart that I had made some definite plan for Dicky's birthday. I could see from my mother-in-law's manner that she had some cherished scheme in mind, and my prophetic soul told me that it would be something which I would not particularly like.

"Good," she returned. "Then I shall not be interfering with any plan of yours. I have already written to Elizabeth asking them to come out here for a week's visit. This is an awful shack, of course, but it is the country, and the children will enjoy the woods and brooks and fields, even if it is cold."

Dicky turned to her abruptly, his brow stormy, his eyes flashing.

"Mother, do you mean to say that you have already written to Elizabeth without first consulting Madge as to whether it would be convenient?"

I trod heavily on his toes under the table in the vain hope that I would be able to stop him from saying the words which I knew would inflame his mother's temper. Failing in that, I hastened to throw a sentence or two of my own into the breach in the desire to prevent further hostilities.

"Dicky, stop talking nonsense!" I said sharply. "I am sure Mother Graham," turning to my mother-in-law who sat regarding her son with the most traditional of "stony stares," "we shall be delighted to have your daughter and her family. You must tell me how many there are so we can arrange for beds and plenty of bedding. This is a rather draughty house, you know."

"I am better aware of that than you are," she returned, ungraciously making no response to my proffer of hospitality. Then she turned her attention to Dicky.

"Richard," she said sternly, "I have never been compelled to consult anybody yet, before inviting guests to my home, whether it be a permanent or a temporary one. I am too old to begin. I do not notice that you or Margaret take the trouble to consult me before inviting your friends here."

Dicky opened his mouth to reply, but I effectually stopped him, by a swift kick, which I think found a mark, for he jumped perceptibly and flashed me a wrathful look. I knew that he was thinking of the strenuous objection his mother had made to our entertaining the Underwoods, and to the proposed visit of Robert Gordon to our home. But I knew also that it was no time to rake up old scores. I foresaw trouble enough in this proposed visit of my relatives-in-law whom I had never seen, without having things complicated by a row between Dicky and his mother.

There was trouble, too, in all the housecleaning, the re-arrangement of our rooms and in the laying in of a stock of provisions to meet the requirements of the menu for each meal that Mother Graham insisted upon deciding in advance to please her daughter and the children. And then, the day they were to arrive, she received a special delivery letter calmly announcing that they were not coming. But my annoyance was forgotten in Mother Graham's very apparent and utter disappointment.

When I broke the news to Dicky he suggested that we have a party anyway, and Mother Graham sweetly acquiesced in our plans to invite the Underwoods.

Lillian's voice over the telephone, however, made me forget all my contentment, and filled me with misgiving. It was tense, totally unlike her usual bluff, hearty tones, and with an undercurrent in it that spelled tragedy.

"What is the trouble, Lillian?" I asked, as soon as I had heard her greeting; "I know something is the matter by your voice."

"Yes, there is," she replied, "but nothing of which I can speak over the 'phone. Tell me, are you going to have any strangers there tomorrow?"

How like Lillian the bluff, honest speech was! Almost any other woman would have hypocritically assured me that nothing was the matter. But not Lillian Underwood!

"Nobody but the Durkees," I assured her. "They have already promised to be here. But, Lillian, you surely must get here as soon as you can. I shall be so worried until I see you. If you don't get here early tomorrow morning I shall come in after you."

"You couldn't keep me away, you blessed child, if you are going to have no strangers there," Lillian returned. "I don't mind the Durkees. But I need you, my dear, very much. Now I must tell you something, don't be shocked or surprised when you see me, for I shall be somewhat changed in appearance. Run along to Dicky now. I'll be with you some time tomorrow forenoon. Good-by."

I almost forgot to hang up the telephone receiver in my bewilderment. What trouble could have come to Lillian that she needed me? She was the last person in the world to need any one, I thought—she, whose sterling good sense and unfailing good-nature had helped me so many times. And what change in her appearance did she mean when she cautioned me against being shocked and surprised at seeing her?

My anxiety concerning Lillian stayed with me all through the evening. I awoke in the night from troubled dreams of her to equally troubled thoughts concerning her. And my concern was complicated by a message which Dicky received the next forenoon.

We had barely finished breakfast when the telephone rang and Dicky answered.

"Hello," I heard him say. "Yes, this is Graham. Oh! Mr. Gordon! how do you do?"

My heart skipped a beat.

"Why! that's awfully kind of you," Dicky was saying, "but we couldn't possibly accept, because we have guests coming ourselves. We expect to have a regular old-fashioned country dinner here at home. But, why do you not come out to us? Oh, no, you wouldn't disturb any plans at all—they've been thoroughly upset already. We had planned to have my sister and her family, six in all, spend this holiday with us, but yesterday we found they could not come. So we're inviting what friends we can find who are not otherwise engaged to help us eat up the turkey. You will be more than welcome if you will join us. All right, then. Do you know about trains? Yes, any taxi driver can tell you where we are. Good-by."

I did not dare to look at my mother-in-law as Dicky came toward us after answering Robert Gordon's telephone message.

I think Dicky was a trifle afraid, also, of his mother's verdict, for his attitude was elaborately apologetic as he explained his invitation to me.

"Your friend, Gordon, has just gotten in from one of those mysterious voyages of his to parts unknown," he said. "He was delayed in reaching the city, only got in last night, too late to telephone us. Seems he had some cherished scheme of having us his guests at a blowout. Wouldn't mind going if we hadn't asked these people here, for they say his little dinners are something to dream about, they're so unique. Of course, there was nothing else for me to do but to invite him out. I thought you wouldn't mind."

In Dicky's tone there was a doubtful inflection which I read correctly. He knew of my interest in the elderly man of mystery who had known my parents so well, and I was sure that he thought I would be overjoyed because he had extended the invitation.

I was glad that I could honestly disabuse his mind of this idea, for I had a curious little feeling that Dicky disliked more than he appeared to do the attentions paid to me by Mr. Gordon.

It was less than an hour before the taxi bearing the first of our guests swung into the driveway and Lillian and Harry Underwood stepped out.

Lillian's head and face were so swathed in veils that I did not realize what the change in her appearance of which she had warned me was until I was alone with her in my room, which I intended giving up to her and her husband while they stayed. Then, as she took off her hat and veils, I almost cried out in astonishment—for at my first, unaccustomed glance, instead of the rouged and powdered face, and dyed hair, which to me had been the only unpleasant things about Lillian Underwood, the face of an old woman looked at me, and the hair above it was gray!

There were the remnants of great youthful beauty in Lillian's face. Nay, more, there were wonderful possibilities when the present crisis in her life, whatever it might be, should have passed. But the effect of the change in her was staggering.

"Awful, isn't it?" she said, coming up to me. "No, don't lie to me," as she saw a confused, merciful denial rise to my lips. "There are mirrors everywhere, you know. There's one comfort, I can't possibly ever look any worse than I do now, and when my hair gets over the effect of its long years of dyeing, and my present emotional crisis becomes less tense I probably shall not be such a fright. But oh, my dear, how glad I am to be with you. I need you so much just now."

She put her head on my shoulder as a homesick child might have done, and I felt her draw two or three long, shuddering breaths, the dry sobs which take the place of tears in the rare moments when Lillian Underwood gives way to emotion. I stroked her hair with tender, pitiful fingers, noticing as I did so what ravages her foolish treatment of her hair had made in tresses that must once have been beautiful. Originally of the blonde tint she had tried to preserve, her locks were now an ugly mixture of dull drab and gray. As I stood looking down at the head pillowed against my shoulder I realized what this transformation in Lillian must mean to Harry Underwood.

He it was who had always insisted that she follow the example of the gay Bohemian crowd of which he was a leader, and disguise her fleeting youth, with dye and rouge. It was to please him, or, as she once expressed it to me, "to play the game fairly with Harry" that she outraged her own instincts, her sense of what was decent and becoming, and constantly made up her face into a mask like that of a woman of the half-world. No one could deny that it disguised her real age, but her best friends, including Dicky and myself, had always felt that the real mature beauty of the woman was being hidden.

"Of course, this is terribly rough on Harry," Lillian said at last, raising her head from my shoulder, and speaking in as ordinary and unruffled a tone as if she had not just gone through what in any other woman would have been a hysterical burst of tears.

"It really isn't fair to him, and under any other conditions in the world I would not do it. He's pretty well cut up about it, so much so that he cannot always control his annoyance when he is speaking about it. But I know you will overlook any little outbreaks of his, won't you? He wanted to come down here with me, you know he's always anxious to see you, or I would have run away by myself."

Her tone was anxious, wistful, and my heart ached for her. I could guess that when Harry Underwood could not "control his annoyance" he could be very horrid indeed. But I winced at her casual remark that her husband was always anxious to see me. Harry Underwood held in restraint by his very real admiration for his brilliant wife had been annoying enough to me. I did not care to think what he might be when enraged at her as I knew he must be now.

Nothing of my feeling, however, must I betray to the friend who had come to me for help and comfort. I drew closer the arms that had not yet released her.

"Dear girl," I said softly, "don't worry any more about your husband or anything else. Just consider that you've come home to your sister. I'm going to keep you awhile now I've got you, and we'll straighten everything out. Don't even bother to tell me anything about it until you are fully rested. I can see you've been under some great strain."

"No one can ever realize how great," she returned. "You see—"

What revelation she meant to make to me I did not then learn, for just at that moment a knock sounded on the door, and in answer to my "come in," Katie appeared and announced the arrival of the Durkees and Richard Gordon.



XXXVIII

"NO—NURSE—JUST—LILLIAN"

"Tell me, Madge," Dicky's tone was tense, and I recognized the note of jealous anger which generally preceded his scenes, "are you going to have that old goat take you out to dinner? Because if you are—"

He broke off abruptly, as if he thought an unspoken threat would be more terrifying than one put into words. I knew to what he referred. As hostess, I, of course, should be escorted in to dinner by the stranger in our almost family party, Robert Gordon, who was also the oldest man present. Ordinarily, Dicky would have realized that his demand to have me change this conventional arrangement was a most ill-bred and inconsiderate thing. But Dicky sane and Dicky jealous, however, were two different men.

Always before this day Dicky had regarded with tolerant amusement the strange interest shown in me by the elderly man of mystery who had known my mother. But the magnificent chrysanthemums which Mr. Gordon had brought me, dozens of them, costing much more money than the ordinary conventional floral gift to one's hostess ought to cost, had roused his always smouldering jealousy to an unreasoning pitch.

Fear of hurting Robert Gordon's feelings was the one consideration that held me back from defying Dicky's mandate. Experience had taught me the best course to pursue with Dicky.

"If, as I suppose, you are referring to Mr. Gordon, it may interest you to know that I have not the faintest intention of going in to dinner with him," I retorted coolly. "Lillian wants to talk with him about South America, and I shall have your friend, Mr. Underwood, as my escort."

"Gee, how happy you'll be," sneered Dicky, but I could see that he was relieved at my information. "You're so fond of dear old Harry, aren't you?"

"To tell you the truth, I have to fight all the time against becoming too fond of him," I returned mockingly. "He can be dangerously fascinating, you know."

Dicky laughed in a way that showed me his brainstorm over Robert Gordon had been checked. But there was a startled look in his eyes which changed to a more speculative scrutiny before he moved away.

"Oh, old Harry's all right," he said. "He's my pal, and he never means anything, anyway." But I noticed that he said it as if he were trying to convince himself of the truth of his assertion.

When I told Harry Underwood that he was to take me in to dinner, and we were leading the way into the dining room, his brilliant black eyes looked down into mine mockingly, and he said:

"You see it is Fate. No matter how you struggle against it you cannot escape me."

"Do I look as if I were struggling?" I laughed back, and saw a sudden expression of bewilderment in his eyes, followed instantly by a flash of triumph.

Everything that was cattishly feminine in me leaped to life at that look in the eyes of the man whom I detested, whom I had even feared. I could read plainly enough in his eyes that he thought the assiduous flatteries he had always paid me were commencing to have their result, that I was beginning to recognize the dangerous fascination he was reputed to have for women of every station. I had a swift, savage desire to avenge the women he must have made suffer, to hurt him as before dinner he had wounded Lillian.

So instead of turning an impassive face to Mr. Underwood's remark, I listened with just the hint of an elusive mischievous smile twisting my lips.

"No, you don't look very uncomfortable. You look"—he caught his breath as if with some emotion too strong for utterance, and then said a trifle huskily:

"Will you let me tell you how you look to me?"

I had to exercise all my self-control to keep from laughing in his face. He was such a poseur, his simulation of emotion was so melodramatic that I wondered if he really imagined I would be impressed by it.

A spirit of mischievous daring stirred in me.

"Don't tell me just now," I said softly. "Wait till after dinner."

"Afraid?" he challenged.

"Perhaps," I countered.

He gave my hand lying upon his arm a swift, furtive pressure and released it so quickly that there was no possibility of his being observed. I had no time to rebuke him, had I been so disposed, for we had almost reached our places at the table.

I do not remember much of the dinner over which Mother Graham, Katie and I had worked so assiduously. That everything went off smoothly, as we had planned, that from the Casaba melons which were served first to the walnuts of the last course, everything was delicious in flavor and perfect in service I was gratefully but dimly aware.

For I felt as if I were on the brink of a volcano. Not because of Harry Underwood's elaborate show of attention to me to which I was pretending to respond, much to the disgust of my mother-in-law, but on account of the queer behavior of Robert Gordon.

Lillian, who was making a pitifully brave attempt to bring to the occasion all the airy brightness with which she was wont to make any gathering favored by her presence a success, secured only the briefest responses from him, although he had taken her out to dinner. Sometimes he made no answer at all to her remarks, evidently not hearing them.

He watched me almost constantly, and so noticeable was his action that I saw every one at the table was aware of it. It was a gaze to set any one's brain throbbing with wild conjectures, so mournful, so elusive it was. The fantastic thought crossed my mind that this mysterious elderly friend of my dead mother's looked like a long famished man, coming suddenly in sight of food.

By the time the dinner was over I was intensely nervous. Katie served us our coffee in the living room, and when I took mine my hand trembled so that the tiny cup rattled against the saucer. I rose from my chair and walked to the fireplace, set the cup upon the mantel and stood looking into the blazing logs Jim had heaped against the old chimney. My guests could not see my face, and I hoped to be able to pull myself together.

"Ready to have me tell you how you look to me, now?" said Harry Underwood's voice, softly, insidiously in my ear.

I started and moved a little away from him, which brought me nearer to the fire. The next moment I was wildly beating at little tongues of flame running up the flimsy fabric of my dress.

I heard hoarse shouts, shrill screams, felt rough hands seize me, and wrap me in heavy, stifling cloth, which seemed to press the flames searingly down into my flesh, and then for a little I knew no more.

It seemed only a moment that I lost consciousness. When I came back to myself I was lying on the couch with Lillian Underwood's deft, tender fingers working over me. From somewhere back of me Dicky's voice sounded in a hoarse, gasping way that terrified me.

"For God's sake, Lil, is she—"

Lillian's voice, firm, reassuring, answered:

"No, Dicky, no, she's pretty badly burned, I fear, but I am sure she will be all right. Now, dear boy, get your mother to her room and make her lie down. Mrs. Durkee and I can take care of Madge better with you all out of the way. Did you get a doctor, Alfred?"

"Coming as soon as he can get here," Alfred Durkee replied.

"Good," Lillian returned. "Now everybody except Mrs. Durkee get out of here. Katie, bring a blanket, some sheets, and one of Mrs. Graham's old nightdresses from her room. I shall have to cut the gown."

Even through the terrible scorching heat which seemed to envelop my body I realized that Lillian, as always, was dominating the situation. I could hear the snip of her scissors as she cut away the pieces of burned cloth, and the low-toned directions to Mrs. Durkee, which told me that Lillian already had secured our first aid kit and was giving me the treatment necessary to alleviate my pain until the physician should arrive.

I am sorry to confess it, but I am a coward where physical pain is concerned. I am not one of those women who can bear the torturing pangs of any illness or accident without an outcry. And, struggle as I might, I could not repress the moan which rose to my lips.

"I know, child." Lillian's tender hands held my writhing ones, her pitying eyes looked into mine; but she turned from me the next moment in amazement, for Robert Gordon, the mysterious man who had loved my mother, appeared, as if from nowhere, at her side, twisting his hands together and muttering words which I could not believe to be real, so strange and disjointed were they. I felt that they must be only fantasies of my confused brain.

"Mr. Gordon, this will never do," Lillian said sternly. "I thought I had sent every one out of the room except Mrs. Durkee."

"I know—I am going right away again. But I had to come this time. Is she going to die?"

"Not if I can get a chance to attend to her without everybody bothering me. I am very sure she is not seriously injured. Now, you must go away."

Mr. Gordon fled at once. And Lillian, and Mrs. Durkee worked so swiftly and skillfully that when the physician, a kindly, elderly practitioner from Crest Haven arrived, my pain had been assuaged.

By his direction I was carried to my own room. I must have fainted before they moved me, for the next thing I remember was the sound of the doctor's voice.

"There is nothing to be alarmed over," the physician was saying to a shadowy some one at the head of my bed, a some one who was breathing heavily, and the trembling of whose body I could feel against the bed. "Of course, the shock has been severe, and the pain of moving her was too much for her. But she is coming round nicely. You may speak to her now."

The shadowy some one moved forward a little, resolved itself to my clearing sight as my husband. He knelt beside the bed and put his lips to my uninjured hand.

"Sweetheart! Sweetheart!" he murmured, "my own girl! Is the pain very bad?"

"Not now," I answered faintly, trying to smile, but only succeeding in twisting my mouth into a grimace of pain. The flames had mercifully spared my hair and most of my face, but there was one burn upon one side of my throat, extending up into my cheek, which made it uncomfortable for me to move the muscles of my face.

"Don't try to talk," Dicky replied. "Just lie still and let us take care of you. Lil will stay, I know, until we can get a nurse here, won't you, Lil?"

As a frightened child might do, I turned my eyes to Lillian, beseechingly.

"No—nurse—just—Lillian," I faltered.

Lillian stooped over me reassuringly.

"No one shall touch you but me," she said decisively, and then turning to the physician, said demurely:

"Do you think I can be trusted with the case, doctor?"

"Most assuredly," the physician returned heartily. "Indeed, if you can stay it is most fortunate for Mrs. Graham. Good trained nurses are at a premium just now, and great care will be necessary in this case to prevent disfigurement!"

A quick, stifled exclamation of dismay came from Dicky.

"Is there any danger of her face being scarred?" he asked worriedly.

"Not while I'm on the job," Lillian returned decisively, and there was no idle boasting in her statement, simply quiet certainty.

But there was another note in her voice, or so it seemed to my feverish imagination, a note of scorn for Dicky, that he should be thinking of my possible disfigurement when my very life had been in question but a moment before.

A sick terror crept over me. Did my husband love me only for what poor claims to pulchritude I possessed? Suppose the physician should be mistaken, and I be hideously scarred, after all, as I had seen fire victims scarred, would I see the love light die in his eyes, would I never again witness the admiring glances Dicky was wont to flash at me when I wore something especially becoming?

I had often wondered since my marriage whether Dicky's love for me was the real lasting devotion which could stand adversity. I knew that no matter how old or gray or maimed or disfigured Dicky might become he would be still my royal lover. I should never see the changes in him. But if I should suddenly turn an ugly scarred face to Dicky would he shrink from me?

An epigram from one of the sanest and cleverest of our modern humorists flashed into my mind. Dicky and I had read it together only a few weeks before.

"Heaven help you, madam, if your husband does not love you because of your foibles instead of in spite of them."

Did all women have this experience I wondered, and then as Lillian's face bent over me I caught my breath in an understanding wave of pity for her.

This was what she was undergoing, this experience of seeing her husband turn away his eyes from her, as if the very sight of her was painful to him.

Dicky would never do that, I knew. He had not the capacity for cruelty which Harry Underwood possessed. But I was sure it would torture me more to know that he was disguising his aversion than to see him openly express it.



XXXIX

HARRY CALLS TO SAY GOOD-BY

Lillian Underwood kept her promise to Dicky that I should suffer no scar as the result of the burns I received when my dress caught fire on the night of my dinner.

Never patient had a more faithful nurse than Lillian. She had a cot placed in my room where she slept at night, and she rarely left my side.

I found my invalidism very pleasant in spite of the pain and inconvenience of my burns. Everyone was devoted to my comfort. Even Mother Graham's acerbity was softened by the suffering I underwent in the first day or two following the accident, although I soon discovered that she was actually jealous because Lillian and not she was nursing me.

"It is the first time in my life that I have ever found my judgment in nursing set aside as of no value," she said querulously to me one day when she was sitting with me while Lillian attended to the preparation of some special dish for me in the kitchen.

"Oh, Mother Graham," I protested, "please don't look at it that way. You know how careful you have to be about your heart. We couldn't let you undertake the task of nursing me, it would have been too much for you."

"Well, if your own mother were alive I don't believe any one could have kept her from taking care of you," she returned stubbornly.

There was a wistful note in her voice that touched and enlightened me. Beneath all the crustiness of my mother-in-law's disposition there must lie a very real regard—I tremulously wondered if I might not call it love—for me.

My heart warmed toward the lonely, crabbed old woman as it had never done before. I put out my uninjured hand, clasped hers, and drew her toward me.

"Mother dear," I said softly, "please believe me, it would be no different if my own little mother were here. She, of course, would want to take care of me, but her frailness would have made it impossible. And I want you to know that I appreciate all your kindness."

She bent to kiss me.

"I'm a cantankerous old woman, sometimes," she said quaveringly, "but I am fond of you, Margaret."

She released me so abruptly and went out of the room so quickly that I had no opportunity to answer her. But I lay back on my pillows, warm with happiness, filled with gratitude that in spite of the many controversies in which my husband's mother and I had been involved, and the verbal indignities which she had sometimes heaped upon me, we had managed to salvage so much real affection as a basis for our future relations with each other.

The reference to my own little mother, which I had made, brought back to me the homesickness, the longing for her which comes over me often, especially when I am not feeling well. When Lillian returned she found me weeping quietly.

"Here, this will never do!" she said kindly, but firmly. "I'm not going to ask you what you were crying about, for I haven't time to listen. I must fix you up to see two visitors. But"—she forestalled the question I was about to ask—"before you see one of them I must tell you that Harry and I have about come to the parting of the ways."

"The parting of the ways!" I gasped. "Harry and you?"

Lillian Underwood nodded as calmly as if she had simply announced a decision to alter a gown or a hat, instead of referring to a separation from her husband.

"It will have to come to that, I am afraid," she said, and looking more closely at her I saw that her calmness was only assumed, that humiliation and sadness had her in their grip.

"I have always feared that when the time came for me to be 'my honest self' instead of a 'made-up daisy'"—she smiled wearily as she quoted the childish rhyme—"Harry would not be big enough to take it well. Of course I could and would stand all his unpleasantness concerning my altered appearance, but the root of his actions goes deeper than that, I am afraid. He dislikes children, and I fear that he will object to my having my little girl with me. And if he does—"

Her tone spelled finality but I had no time to bestow upon the probable fate of Harry Underwood. With a glad little cry, I drew Lillian down to my bedside and kissed her.

"Oh! Lillian!" I exclaimed, "are you really going to have your baby girl after all?"

She nodded, and I held her close with a little prayer of thanksgiving that fate had finally relented and had given to this woman the desire of her heart, so long kept from her.

I saw now, and wondered why I had not realized before the reason for Lillian's sudden abandonment of the rouge and powder and dyed hair which she had used so long. Once she had said to me, "When my baby comes home, she shall have a mother with a clean face and pepper and salt hair, but until that time, I shall play the game with Harry."

And so for Harry's sake, for the man who was not worthy to tie her shoes, she had continued to crucify her real instincts in an effort to hide the worst feminine crime in her husband's calendar—advancing age.

"When will she come to you?" I asked, and then with a sudden remembrance of the only conditions under which Lillian's little daughter could be restored to her, I added, "then her father is—"

"Not dead, but dying," Lillian returned gravely, "but oh, my dear, he sent for me two weeks ago and acknowledged the terrible wrong he did me. I am vindicated at last, Madge—at last."

Her voice broke, and as she laid her cheek against my hand, I felt the happy tears which she must have kept back all through the excitement of my accident. How like her to put by her own greatest experiences as of no consequence when weighed against another's trouble!

I kissed her happily. "Do you feel that you can tell me about it?" I asked.

"You and Dicky are the two people I want most to know," she returned. "Will confessed everything to me, and better still, to his mother. I would have been glad to have spared the poor old woman, for she idolizes her son, but you remember I told you that although she loved me, he had made her believe the vile things he said of me. It was necessary that she should know the truth, if after Will's death I was to have any peace in my child's companionship.

"Marion loves her grandmother dearly, and the old woman fairly idolizes the child, although her feebleness has compelled her to leave most of the care of the child to hired nurses. There is where I am going to have my chance with my little girl. I never shall separate her from her grandmother while the old woman lives, but from the moment she comes to me, no hireling's hand shall care for her—she shall be mine, all mine."

Her voice was a paean of triumphant love. My heart thrilled in sympathy with hers, but underneath it all I was conscious of a strong desire to have Harry Underwood reconciled to this new plan of Lillian's. The calmness with which she had spoken of their parting had not deceived me. I knew that Lillian's pride, already dragged in the dust by her first unhappy marital experience, would suffer greatly if she had to acknowledge that her second venture had also failed. I tried to think of some manner in which I could remedy matters. Unconsciously Lillian played directly into my hands.

"But here I am bothering you with all of my troubles," she said, "when all the time gallant cavaliers wait without, anxious to pay their devoirs."

Her voice was as gay, as unconcerned, as if she had not just been sounding the depths of terrible memories. I paid a silent tribute to her powers of self-discipline before answering curiously.

"Gallant cavaliers?" I repeated. "Who are they?"

"Well, Harry is at the door, and Mr. Gordon at the gate," she returned merrily. "In other words, Harry is downstairs, waiting patiently for me to give him permission to see you, while Mr. Gordon took up quarters at a country inn near here the day after your accident and has called or telephoned almost hourly since. He begged me this morning to let him know when you would be able to see him. If Harry's call does not tire you, I think I would better 'phone him to come over."

"Lillian!" I spoke imperatively, as a sudden recollection flashed through my mind. "Was I delirious, or did I hear Mr. Gordon exclaim something very foolish the night of my accident?"

She looked at me searchingly.

"He said, 'My darling, have I found you only to lose you again?'" she answered.

"What did he mean?" I gasped.

"That he must tell you himself, Madge," she said gravely. "For me to guess his meaning would be futile. Shall I telephone him to come over, and will you see Harry for a moment or two now?"

"Yes! to both questions," I answered.

"Well, lady fair, they haven't made you take the count yet, have they? By Jove, you're prettier than ever."

Ushered by Lillian, Harry Underwood came into my room with all his usual breeziness, and stood looking down at me as I lay propped against the pillows Lillian had piled around me. It was the first time I had seen him since the night of our dinner, when with the wild idea of punishing Dicky for his foolishness regarding elderly Mr. Gordon I had carried on a rather intense flirtation with Harry Underwood.

I had been heartily sorry for and ashamed of the experiment before the dinner was half over, and many times since the accident which interrupted the evening I had wondered, half-whimsically, whether my dress catching fire was not a "judgment on me." I had deeply dreaded seeing Mr. Underwood again, but as I looked into his eyes I saw nothing but friendly cheeriness and pity.

Lillian drew a chair for him to my bedside, and for a few moments he chatted of everything and nothing in the entertaining manner he knows so well how to use.

"You may have just three minutes more, Harry," Lillian said at last. "Stay here while I go down to telephone. Then you will have to vamoose. Mr. Gordon is coming over, and I can't have her too tired."

Her husband gave a low whistle, and I saw a quick look of understanding pass between him and Lillian. I did not have time to wonder about it, however, for Lillian went out of the room, and the moment she closed the door he said tensely:

"Tell me you forgive me. If I had not teased you that night you would not have moved toward the fire, and your dress would not have caught. Why! you might have been killed or horribly disfigured. I've been suffering the tortures of Hades ever since. But you will forgive me, won't you? I'll do any penance you name."

Through all the extravagance of his speech there ran a deeper note than I had believed Harry Underwood to be capable of sounding. As his eyes met mine and I saw that there was something as near suffering in them as the man's self-centred careless nature was capable of feeling I saw my opportunity.

"Yes, I'll forgive you—everything—if you'll promise me one thing, which will make me very happy."

He bit his lip savagely—I think he guessed my meaning—but he did not hesitate.

"Name it," he said shortly.

"Don't hurt Lillian any more about the change in her appearance or object to her having her child with her," I pleaded.

He thought a long minute, then with a quick gesture he caught my uninjured hand in his, carried it to his lips, and kissed it, then laid it gently back upon the bed again.

"Done," he said gruffly. "It won't bother me much for awhile anyway. Your friend Gordon, wants me to go with him on a long trip to South America. I'm the original white-haired boy with him just now for some reason or other, and it's just the chance I have wanted to look up the theatrical situation down there. Perhaps I can persuade the old boy to loosen up on some of his bank roll and play angel. But anyway I'm going to be gone quite a stretch, and when I come back I'll try to be a reformed character. But remember, wherever I am 'me art is true to Poll.'"

He bowed mockingly with his old manner, and walked toward the door, meeting Lillian as she came in.

"So long, Lil," he said carelessly. "I'm going for a long walk. See you later."

She looked at him searchingly. "All right," she answered laconically, and then came over to me.

"Mr. Gordon will be here in a half-hour," she said. "Please try to rest a little before he comes."

She lowered the shades, and my pillows, kissed me gently, and left the room. But I could neither rest nor sleep. The wildest conjectures went through my brain. Who was Robert Gordon, and why was he so strangely interested in me?



XL

MADGE FACES THE PAST AND HEARS A DOOR SOFTLY CLOSE

It seemed a very long time to me, as I tossed on my pillows, beset by the problem that even the name Robert Gordon always presents to me, before Lillian came back to my room. But when she entered she said that Mr. Gordon would soon arrive and that I must be prepared to see him, so she bathed my hands and face and gave me an egg-nog before propping me up against my pillows to receive my visitor.

"Of course you will stay with me, Lillian, while he is here," I said.

She smiled enigmatically. "Part of the time," she said.

But when Mr. Gordon came, bringing with him an immense sheaf of roses, she left the room almost at once, giving as an excuse her wish to arrange the flowers.

My visitor's eyes were burning with a light that almost frightened me as he sat down by my bedside and took my hand in his.

"My dear child," he said, and though the words were such as any elderly man might address to a young woman, yet there was an intensity in them that made me uncomfortable. "Are you sure everything is all right with you?"

"Very sure," I replied, smiling. "If Mrs. Underwood would permit me to do so, I am certain I could get up now."

"You must not think of trying it," he returned sharply, and with a note in his voice, almost like authority, which puzzled me.

"Thank God for Mrs. Underwood!" he went on. "She is a woman in a thousand. I am indebted to her for life."

I shrank back among my pillows, and wished that Lillian would return to the room. I began to wonder if Mr. Gordon's brain was not slightly turned. Surely, the fact that he had once known and loved my mother was no excuse for the extravagant attitude he was taking.

He saw the movement, and into his eyes flashed a look so mournful, so filled with longing that I was thrilled to the heart. The next moment he threw himself upon his knees by the side of my bed, and cried out tensely:

"Oh, my darling child, don't shrink from me. You will kill me. Don't you see? Can't you guess? I am your father!"

My father! Robert Gordon my father!

I looked at the elderly man kneeling beside my bed, and my brain whirled with the unreality of it all. The "man of mystery," the "Quester" of Broadway, the elderly soldier of fortune, about whose reputed wealth and constant searching of faces wherever he was the idle gossip of the city's Bohemia had whirled—to think that this man was the father I had never known, the father, alas! whom I had hoped never to know.

Everything was clear to me now—the reason for his staring at me when he first caught sight of me in the Sydenham Hotel, his trailing of my movements until he had found out my name and home, the introduction he obtained to Dicky, and through him to me, his emotion at hearing my mother's name, his embarrassing attentions to me ever since—the explanation for all of which had puzzled me had come in the choking words of the man whose head was bowed against my bed, and whose whole frame was shaking with suppressed sobs.

I felt myself trembling in the grip of a mighty surge of longing to gather that bowed gray head into my arms and lavish the love he longed for upon my father. My heart sang a little hymn of joy. I, who had been kinless, with no one of my own blood, had found a father!

And then, with my hand outstretched, almost touching my father's head, the revulsion came.

True, this man was my father, but he was also the man who had made my mother's life one long tragedy. All my life I had schooled myself to hate the man who had deserted my mother and me when I was four years old, who had added to the desertion the insult of taking with him the woman who had been my mother's most intimate friend. My love for my mother had been the absorbing emotion of my life, until she had left me, and because of that love I had loathed the very thought of the man who had caused her to suffer so terribly.

My father lifted his head and looked at me, and there was that in his eyes which made me shudder. It was the look of a prisoner in the dock, waiting to receive a sentence.

"Of course, I know you must hate the very sight of me, Margaret," he said brokenly. "I had not meant to tell you so soon. But I have to go away almost at once to South America, and it is very uncertain when I shall return. I could not bear to go without your knowing how I have loved and longed for you.

"Never so great a sinner as I, my child," the weary old voice went on, "but, oh, if you could know my bitter repentance, my years of loneliness."

His voice tore at my heart strings, but I steeled myself against him. One thing I must know.

"Where is the person with whom—" I could not finish the words.

"I do not know." The words rang true. I was sure he was not lying to me. "I have not seen or heard of her in over twenty years."

Then the association had not lasted. I had a sudden clairvoyant glimpse into my father's soul. My mother had been the real love of his life. His infatuation for the other woman had been but a temporary madness. What long drawn out, agonized repentance must have been his for twenty years with wife, child and home lost to him!

I leaned back and closed my eyes for a minute, overwhelmed with the problem which confronted me. And then—call it hallucination or what you will—I heard my mother's voice, as clearly as I ever heard it in life, repeating the words I had read weeks before in the letter she had left for me at her death.

"Remember it is my last wish, Margaret, that if your father be living sometime you may be reconciled to him."

I opened my eyes with a little cry of thanksgiving. It was as if my mother had stretched out her hand from heaven to sanction the one thing I most longed to do.

"Father!" I gasped. "Oh, my father, I have wanted you so."

He uttered a little cry of joy, and then my father's arms were around me, my face was close to his, and for the first time since I was a baby of four years I knew my father's kisses.

A smothered sound, almost like a groan, startled me, and then the door slammed shut.

"What was that?" I asked. "Is there any one there?"

My father raised his head. "No, there is no one there," he said. "See, the wind is rising. It must have been that which slammed the door. I think I would better shut the window."

He moved over to the window, which Lillian had kept partly ajar for air, and closed it. Then he returned to my bedside.

"There is one thing I must ask you to do, my child," he said hesitatingly, "and that is to keep secret the fact that instead of being Robert Gordon, I am in reality Charles Robert Gordon Spencer, and your father. Of course your husband must know and Mrs. Underwood, as her husband is going with me to South America. But I should advise very strongly against the knowledge coming into the possession of any one else.

"I cannot explain to you now, why I dropped part of my name, or why I exact this promise," he went on, "but it is imperative that I do ask it, and that you heed the request. You will respect my wishes in this matter, will you not, my daughter?"

It was all very stilted, almost melodramatic, but my father was so much in earnest that I readily gave the promise he asked. With a look of relief he took a package from his pocket and handed it to me.

"Keep this carefully," he said. "It contains all the data which you will need in case of my death. Rumor says that I am a very rich man. As usual rumor is wrong, but I have enough so that you will always be comfortable. And for fear that something might happen to you in my absence I have placed to your account in the Knickerbocker money enough for any emergency, also for any extra spending money you may wish. The bank book is among these papers. I trust that you will use it. I shall like to feel that you are using it. And now good-by. I shall not see you again."

He kissed me, lingeringly, tenderly, and went out of the room. I lay looking at the package he had given me, wondering if it were all a dream.



XLI

WHY DID DICKY GO?

"Margaret, I have the queerest message from Richard. I cannot make it out."

My mother-in-law rustled into my room, her voice querulous, her face expressing the utmost bewilderment.

"What is it, mother?" I asked nervously. It was late afternoon of the day in which Robert Gordon had revealed his identity as my father, and my nerves were still tense from the shock of the discovery.

"Why, Richard has left the city. He telephoned me just now that he had an unexpected offer at an unusual sum to do some work in San Francisco, I think, he said, and that he would be gone some months. If he accepted the offer he would have no time to come home. He said he would write to both of us tonight. What do you suppose it means?"

"I—do—not—know," I returned slowly and truthfully, but there was a terrible frightened feeling at my heart. Dicky gone for months without coming to bid me good-by! My world seemed to whirl around me. But I must do or say nothing to alarm my mother-in-law. Her weak heart made it imperative that she be shielded from worry of any kind.

I rallied every atom of self-control I possessed. "There is nothing to worry about, mother," I said carelessly. "Dicky has often spoken recently about this offer to go to San Francisco. It was always tentative before, but he knew that when it did come he would have to go at a minute's notice. You know he always keeps a bag packed at the studio for just such emergencies."

The last part of my little speech was true. Dicky did keep a bag packed for the emergency summons he once in a while received from his clients. But I had never heard of the trip to San Francisco. But I must reassure my mother-in-law in some way.

"Well, I think it's mighty queer," she grumbled, going out of the room.

"You adorable little fibber!" Lillian said tenderly, rising, and coming over to me. Her voice was gay, but I who knew its every intonation, caught an undertone of worry.

"Lillian!" I exclaimed sharply. "What is it? Do you know anything?"

"Hush, child," she said firmly. "I know nothing. You will hear all about it tomorrow morning when you receive Dicky's letters. Until then you must be quiet and brave."

It was like her not to adjure me to keep from worrying. She never did the usual futile things. But all through my wakeful night, whenever I turned over or uttered the slightest sound, she was at my side in an instant.

Never until death stops my memory will I forget that next morning with its letters from Dicky.

There was one for my mother-in-law, none for me, but I saw an envelope in Lillian's hand, which I was sure was from my husband, even before I had seen the shocked pallor which spread over her face as she read it.

"Oh, Lillian, what is it?" I whispered in terror.

"Wait," she commanded. "Do not let your mother-in-law guess anything is amiss."

But when Mother Graham's demand to know what Dicky had written to me had been appeased by Lillian's offhand remark that country mails were never reliable, and that my letter would probably arrive later, the elder woman went to her own room to puzzle anew over her son's letter, which simply said over again what he had told her over the telephone.

When she had gone Lillian locked the door softly behind her, then coming over to me, sank down by my bedside and slipped her arm around me.

"You must be brave, Madge," she said quietly. "Read this through and tell me if you have any idea what it means."

I took the letter she held out to me, and read it through.

"Dear Lil," the letter began. "You have never failed me yet, so I know you'll look after things for me now.

"I am going away. I shall never see Madge again, nor do I ever expect to hear from her. Will you look out for her until she is free from me? She can sue me for desertion, you know, and get her divorce. I will put in no defence.

"Most of her funds are banked in her name, anyway. But for fear she will not want to use that money I am going to send a check to you each month for her which you are to use as you see fit, with or without her knowledge. I am enclosing the key of the studio. The rent is paid a long ways ahead, and I will send you the money for future payments and its care. Please have it kept ready for me to walk in at any time. Mother always goes to Elizabeth's for the holidays, anyway. Keep her from guessing as long as you can. I'll write to her after she gets to Elizabeth's.

"I guess that's all. If Madge doesn't understand why I am doing this I can't help it. But it's the only thing to do. Yours always. DICKY."

The room seemed to whirl around me as I read. Dicky gone forever, arranging for me to get a divorce! I clung blindly to Lillian as I moaned: "Oh, what does it mean?"

"Think, Madge, Madge, have you and Dicky had any quarrel lately?"

"Nothing that could be called a quarrel, no," I returned, "and, not even the shadow of a disagreement since my accident."

"Then," Lillian said musingly, "either Dicky has gone suddenly mad—"

She stopped and looked at me searchingly. "Or what, Lillian," I pleaded. "Tell me. I am strong enough to stand the truth, but not suspense."

"I believe you are," she said, "and you will have to help me find out the truth. Now remember this may have no bearing on the thing at all, but Harry saw Grace Draper talking to Dicky the other day. He said Dicky didn't act particularly well pleased at the meeting, but that the girl was, as Harry put it, 'fit to put your eyes out,' she looked so stunning. But it doesn't seem possible that if Dicky had gone away with her he would write that sort of a note to me and leave no word for you."

"Fit to put your eyes out!" The phrase stung me. With a quick movement, I grasped the hand mirror that lay on the stand by my bed, and looked critically at the image reflected there. Wan, hollow-eyed, with one side of my face and neck still flaming from my burns, I had a quick perception of the way in which my husband, beauty-lover that he is, must have contrasted my appearance with that of Grace Draper.

Lillian took the mirror forcibly from me, and laid it out of my reach.

"This sort of thing won't do," she said firmly. "It only makes matters worse. Now just be as brave as you possibly can. Remember, I am right here every minute."

I could only cling to her. There seemed in all the world no refuge for me but Lillian's arms.

The weeks immediately following Dicky's departure are almost a blank memory to me. I seemed stunned, incapable of action, even of thinking clearly.

If it had not been for Lillian, I do not know what I should have done. She cared for me with infinite tenderness and understanding, she stood between me and the imperative curiosity and bewilderment of my mother-in-law, and she made all the arrangements necessary for my taking up my life as a thing apart from my husband.

It seemed almost like an interposition of Providence that two days after Dicky's bombshell, his mother received a letter from her daughter Elizabeth asking her to go to Florida for the rest of the winter. One of the children had been ordered south by the family physician, and Dicky's sister was to accompany her little daughter, while the other children remained at home under the care of their father and his mother. Mother Graham dearly loves to travel, and I knew from Lillian's reports and the few glimpses I had of my mother-in-law that she was delighted with the prospect before her.

How Lillian managed to quiet the elder woman's natural worry about Dicky, her half-formed suspicion that something was wrong, and her conviction that without her to look after me I should not be able to get through the winter, I never knew.

I do not remember seeing my mother-in-law but once or twice in the interval between the receipt of Dicky's letter and her departure. The memory of her good-by to me, however, is very distinct.

She came into the room, cloaked and hatted, ready for the taxi which was to take her to the station. Katie was to go into New York with her, and see her safely on the train. Her face was pale, and I noticed listlessly that her eyelids were reddened as if she had been weeping. She bent and kissed me tenderly, and then she put her arms around me, and held me tightly.

"I don't know what it is all about, dear child," she said. "I hope all is as it seems outwardly. But remember, Margaret, I am your friend, whatever happens, and if it will help you any, you may remember that I, too, have had to walk this same sharp paved way."

Then she went away. I remembered that she had said something of the kind once before, giving me to understand that Dicky's father had caused her much unhappiness. Did she believe too, I wondered, that Dicky was with Grace Draper, that his brief infatuation for the girl had returned when he had seen her again?

For days after that, I drifted—there is no other word for it—through the hours of each day. When it was absolutely necessary for Lillian to know some detail, which I alone could give her, she would come to me, rouse me, and holding me to the subject by the sheer force of her will, obtain the information she wished, and then leave me to myself, or rather to Katie again. Katie was my devoted slave. She waited on me hand and foot, and made a most admirable nurse when Lillian was compelled to be absent.

When I thought about the matter at all, I realized that Lillian was preparing to have me share her apartment in the city when I should be strong enough to leave my home. Harry Underwood had gone with my father to South America for a trip which would take many months, so I made no protest. I knew also, because of questions she had made me answer, that she had arranged with the Lotus Study Club to have an old teaching comrade of mine, a man who had experience in club lectures, take my place until I should be well enough to go back to the work.

In so far as I could feel anything, the knowledge that I was still to have my club work gratified me. The twenty dollars a week which it paid me, while not large, would preserve my independence until I could gain courage to go back to my teaching.

For one feeling obsessed me, was strong enough to penetrate the lethargy of mind and body into which Dicky's letter had thrown me. I spoke of it to Lillian one day.

"Do—not—use—any—of—Dicky's—money," I said slowly and painfully. "My—own—bank—book—in—desk."

She took it out, and I also gave her the bank book and papers my father had given me the day before he left for South America.

"Keep—them—for—me," I whispered, and then at her tender comprehending smile, I had a sudden revelation.

"Then—you—know—" Astonishment made my voice stronger.

"That Robert Gordon is your father?" she returned briskly. "Bless you, child, I've suspected it ever since I first heard of his emotion on hearing the names of your parents. But nobody else knows, I didn't think it necessary to tell your mother-in-law or Katie, unless, of course, you want me to do so."

Her smile was so cheery, so infectious, that I could not help but smile back at her. There was still something on my mind, however.

"This house must be closed," I told her. "Try to find positions for Katie and Jim."

"I'll attend to everything," she promised, and I did not realize that her words meant directly opposite to the interpretation I put upon them, until after myself and all my personal belongings had been moved to Lillian's apartment in the city, and I had thrown off the terrible physical weakness and mental lethargy which had been mine.

"I had to do as I thought best about the house in Marvin, Madge," she said firmly. "I thoroughly respect your feeling about using any of Dicky's money for your own expenses, but you are not living in the Marvin house. It is simply Dicky's home, which as his friend, commissioned to see after his affairs, I am going to keep in readiness for his return, unless I receive other instructions from him. Jim and Katie will stay there as caretakers until this horrible mistake, whatever it may be, is cleared up. Thus your home will be always waiting for you."

"Never my home again, I fear, Lillian," I said sadly.

There is no magic of healing like that held in the hands of a little child. It was providential for me that, a short time after Lillian took me to the apartment which had been home to her for years, her small daughter, Marion, was restored to her.

The child's father died suddenly, after all, and to Lillian fell the task of caring for and comforting the old mother of the man who had done his best to spoil Lillian's life. She brought the aged and feeble sufferer to the apartment, established her in the bedroom which Lillian had always kept for herself, and engaged a nurse to care for her. When I recalled Lillian's story, remembered that her first husband's mother without a jot of evidence to go upon had believed her son's vile accusations against Lillian, my friend's forgiveness seemed almost divine to me. I am afraid I never could have equaled it. When I said as much to Lillian, she looked at me uncomprehendingly.

"Why, Madge!" she said. "There was nothing else to do. Marion's grandmother is devoted to her. To separate them now would kill the old woman. Besides her income is so limited that she cannot have the proper care unless I do take her in."

"I thought you said Mr. Morten had a legacy about the time of his second marriage."

"He did, but most of it has been dissipated, I imagine, and what there is left is in the possession of his wife, a woman with no more red blood than a codfish. She would let his mother starve before she would exert herself to help her, or part with any money. No, there is nothing else to do, Madge. I'll just have to work a little harder, that's all, and that's good for me, best reducing system there is, you know."

The sheer, indomitable courage of her, taking up burdens in her middle age which should never be hers, and assuming them with a smile and jest upon her lips! I felt suddenly ashamed of the weakness with which I had met my own problems.

"Lillian!" I said abruptly, "you make me ashamed of myself. I'm going to stop grieving—as much as I can—" I qualified, "and get to work. Tell me, how can I best help you? I'm going back to my club work next week—I am sure I shall be strong enough by then, but I shall have such loads of time outside."

My friend came over to me impetuously, and kissed me warmly.

"You blessed child!" she said. "I am so glad if anything has roused you. And I'm going to accept your words in the spirit in which I am sure they were uttered. If you can share Marion with me for awhile, it will help me more than anything else. I have so many orders piled up, I don't know where to begin first. Her grandmother is too ill to attend to her, and I don't want to leave her with any hired attendant, she has had too many of those already."

"Don't say another word," I interrupted. "There's nothing on earth I'd rather do just now than take care of Marion."

Thus began a long succession of peaceful days, spent with Lillian's small daughter. She was a bewitching little creature of nine years, but so tiny that she appeared more like a child of six. I had taught many children, but never had been associated with a child at home. I grew sincerely attached to the little creature, and she, in turn, appeared very fond of me. Lillian told her to call me "Aunt Madge," and the sound of the title was grateful to me.

"Auntie Madge, Auntie Madge," the sweet childish voice rang the changes on the name so often that I grew to associate my name with the love I felt for the child. This made it all the harder for me to bear when the child's hand all unwittingly brought me the hardest blow Fate had yet dealt me.

It was her chief delight to answer the postman's ring, and bring me the mail each day. On this particular afternoon I had been especially busy, and thus less miserable than usual. I heard the postman's ring, and then the voice of Marion.

"Auntie Madge, it's a letter for you this time."

I began to tremble, for some unaccountable reason. It was as though the shadow of the letter the child was bringing had already begun to fall on me. As she ran to me, and held out the letter, I saw that it was postmarked San Francisco! But the handwriting was not Dicky's.

I opened it, and from it fell a single sheet of notepaper inscribed:

"She laughs best who laughs last. Grace Draper."

I looked at the thing until it seemed to me that the characters were alive and writhed upon the paper. I shudderingly put the paper away from me, and leaned back in my chair and shut my eyes. Then Marion's little arms were around my neck, her warm, moist kisses upon my cheek, her frightened voice in my ears.

"Oh! Auntie Madge," she said. "What was in the naughty letter that hurt you so? Nasty old thing! I'm going to tear it up."

"No, no, Marion," I answered. "I must let your mother see it first. Call her, dear, won't you, please?"

When Lillian came, I mutely showed her the note. She studied it carefully, frowning as she did so.

"Pleasant creature!" she commented at last. "But I shouldn't put too much dependence on this, Madge. She may be with him, of course. But you ought to know that truth is a mere detail with Grace Draper. She would just as soon have sent this to you if she had not seen him for weeks, and knew no more of his address than you."

"But this is postmarked San Francisco," I said faintly.

Lillian laughed shortly. "My dear little innocent!" she said, "it would be the easiest thing in the world for her to send this envelope enclosed in one to some friend in San Francisco, who would re-direct it for her."

"I never thought of that," I said, flushing. "But, oh! Lillian, if he did not go away with her, what possible explanation is there of his leaving like this?"

"Yes, I know, dear," she returned. "It's a mystery, and one in the solving of which I seem perfectly helpless. I do wish someone would drop from the sky to help us."



XLII

DAYS THAT CREEP SLOWLY BY

It was not from the sky, however, but from across the ocean that the help Lillian had longed for in solving the mystery of Dicky's abandonment of me, finally came. It was less than a week after the receipt of Grace Draper's message, that Lillian and I, sitting in her wonderful white and scarlet living room, one evening after little Marion had gone to bed, heard Betty ushering in callers.

"Betty must know them or she wouldn't bring them in unannounced," Lillian murmured, as she rose to her feet, and then the next moment there was framed in the doorway the tall figure of Dr. Pettit. And with him, wonder of wonders! the slight form, the beautiful, wistful, tired face of Katharine Sonnot, whose ambition to go to France as a nurse I had been able to further.

"My dear, what has happened to you?" Katherine exclaimed solicitously. "I received no answer to my letter saying I was coming home, so when I reached New York, I went to Dr. Pettit. He thought you were at Marvin, but when he telephoned out there, Katie said you had had a terrible accident, and that you had left Marvin. I was not quite sure, for she was half crying over the telephone, but I thought she said 'for keeps.'"

She stopped and looked at me with a hint of fright in her manner. I knew she wanted to ask about Dicky's absence, and did not dare to do so.

"Everything you heard is true, Katherine," I returned, a trifle unsteadily, as her arms went around me warmly. I was more than a trifle upset by her coming, for associated with her were memories of my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, who had gone to the great war when he had learned that I was married, and of whose death "somewhere in France," I had heard through Mrs. Stewart.

"Where is your husband?" Dr. Pettit demanded, and there was that in his voice which told me that he was putting an iron hand upon his own emotions.

Now the stock answer which Lillian and I returned to all inquiries of this sort was "In San Francisco upon a big commission." It was upon my lips, but some influence stronger than my will made me change it to the truth.

"I do not know," I said faintly. "He left the city very abruptly several weeks ago, sending word in a letter to Mrs. Underwood that he would never see me again. It is a terrible mystery."

Dr. Pettit muttered something that I knew was a bitter anathema against Dicky, and then folded his arms tightly across his chest, as if he would keep in any further comment. But I had no time to pay any attention to him, for Katherine Sonnot was uttering words that bewildered and terrified me.

"Oh! how terrible!" she said. "Jack will be so grieved. He had so hoped to find you happy together when he came home."

Was the girl's brain turned, I wondered, because of grief for my brother-cousin's death? I had known before I secured the chance for her to go to France that she was romantically interested in the man who had been her brother's comrade, although she had never seen him. And from Jack's letters to Mrs. Stewart, I had learned of their meeting in the French hospital, and of the acquaintance which promised to ripen—which evidently had ripened—into love.

I looked at her searchingly, and then I spoke, hardly able to get the words out for the wild trembling of my whole body.

"Jack grieved?" I said. "Why! Jack is dead! We had the notice of his death weeks ago from his friend, Paul Caillard."

I saw them all look at me as if frightened. Dr. Pettit reached me first and put something under my nostrils which vitalized my wandering senses. I straightened myself and cried out peremptorily.

"What is it, oh! what is it?"

I saw Katherine look at Dr. Pettit, as if for permission, and the young physician's lips form the words, "Tell her."

"No, dear. Jack isn't dead," she said softly. "He was missing for some time, and was brought into our hospital terribly wounded, but he is very much alive now, and will be here in New York in two weeks."

I felt the pungent revivifier in Dr. Pettit's hand steal under my nostrils again, but I pushed it aside and sat up.

"I am not at all faint," I said abruptly, and then to Katherine Sonnot. "Please say that over again, slowly."

She repeated her words slowly. "I should have waited to come over with him," she added, "for he is still quite weak, but Dr. Braithwaite had to send some one over to attend to business for the hospital. He selected me, and so I had to come on earlier."

So it was true, then, this miracle of miracles, this return of the dead to life! Jack, the brother-cousin on whom I had depended all my life, was still in the same world with me! Some of the terrible burden I had been bearing since Dicky's disappearance slipped away from me. If anyone in the world could solve the mystery of Dicky's actions, it would be Jack Bickett.

Dr. Pettit's voice broke into my reverie. I saw that Lillian and Katherine Sonnot were deep in conversation. The young physician and I were far enough away from them so that there was no possibility of his low tones being heard. He bent over my chair, and his eyes were burning with a light that terrified me.

"Tell me," he commanded, "do you want your husband back again. Take your time in answering. I must know."

There was something in his voice that compelled obedience. I leaned back in my chair and shut my eyes, while I looked at the question he had put me fairly and squarely.

The question seemed to echo in my ears. I was surprised at myself that I did not at once reply with a passionate affirmative. Surely I had suffered enough to welcome Dicky's return at any time.

Ah! there was the root of the whole thing. I had suffered, how I had suffered at Dicky's hands! As my memory ran back through our stormy married life, I wondered whether it were wise—even though it should be proved to me that Dicky had not gone away with Grace Draper—to take up life with my husband again.

And then, woman-like, all the bitter recollections were shut out by other memories which came thronging into my brain, memories of Dicky's royal tenderness when he was not in a bad humor, of his voice, his smile, his lips, his arms around me, I knew, although my reason dreaded the knowledge, that unless my husband came back to me, I should never know happiness again.

I opened my eyes and looked steadily at the young physician.

"Yes, God help me. I do!" I said.

Dr. Pettit winced as if I had struck him. Then he said gravely:

"Thank you for your honesty, and believe that if there be any way in which I can serve you, I shall not hesitate to take it."

"I am sure of that," I replied earnestly, and the next moment, without a farewell glance, a touch of my hand, he went over to Katherine, and, in a voice very different in volume than the suppressed tones of his conversation to me, I heard him apologize to her for having to go away at once, heard her laughing reply that after the French hospitals she did not fear the New York streets, and then the door had closed after the young physician, whose too-evident interest in me had always disturbed me.

I hastened to join Lillian and Katherine. I did not want to be left alone. Thinking was too painful.

"Just think!" Katherine said as I joined them, "I find that I'm living only a block away. I'm at my old rooming place—luckily they had a vacant room. Of course, I shall be fearfully busy with Dr. Braithwaite's work, but being so near, I can spend every spare minute with you—that is, if you want me," she added shyly.

"Want you, child!" I returned, and I think the emphasis in my voice reassured her, for she flushed with pleasure, and the next minute with embarrassment as I said pointedly:

"I imagine you have some unusually interesting and pleasant things to tell me, especially about my cousin."

But, after all, it was left for Jack himself to tell me the "interesting things." Katherine became almost at once so absorbed in the work for Dr. Braithwaite that she had very little time to spend with us. There was another reason for her absence, of which she spoke half apologetically one night, about a week after her arrival.

"There's a girl in the room next mine who keeps me awake by her moaning," she said. "I don't get half enough sleep, and the result is that when I get in from my work I'm so dead tired I tumble into bed, instead of coming over here as I'm longing to do. The housekeeper says she's a student of some kind, and that she's really ill enough to need a physician, although she goes to her school or work each morning. I've only caught glimpses of her, but she strikes me as being rather a stunning-looking creature. I wish she'd moan in the daytime, though. Some night I'm going in there and give her a sleeping powder. Joking aside, I'm rather anxious about her. Whatever is the matter with her, physical or mental, it's a real trouble, and I wish I could help her."

The real Katherine Sonnot spoke in the last sentence. Like many nurses, she had a superficial lightness of manner, behind which she often concealed the wonderful sympathy with and understanding for suffering which was hers. I knew that if the poor unknown sufferer needed aid or friendship, she would receive both from Katherine.

It was shortly after this talk that I noticed the extraordinary intimacy which seemed to have sprung up between Katherine and Lillian. I seemed to be quite set aside, almost forgotten, when Katherine came to the apartment. And there was such an air of mystery about their conversation! If they were talking together, and I came within hearing, they either abruptly stopped speaking, or shifted the subject.

I was just childish and weak enough from my illness to be a trifle chagrined at being so left out, and I am afraid my chagrin amounted almost to sulkiness sometimes. Lillian and Katherine, however, appeared to notice nothing, and their mysterious conferences increased in number as the days went on.

There came a day at last when my morbidness had increased to such an extent that I felt there was nothing more in the world for me, and that there was no one to care what became of me. I was huddled in one of Lillian's big chairs before the fireplace in the living room, drearily watching the flames, through eyes almost too dim with tears to see them. I could hear the murmur of voices in the hall, where Katherine and Lillian had been standing ever since Katherine's arrival, a few minutes before. Then the voices grew louder, there was a rush of feet to the door, a "Hush!" from Lillian, and then, pale, emaciated, showing the effects of the terrible ordeal through which he had gone, my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, who, until Katherine came home, I had thought was dead, stood before me.

"Oh! Jack, Jack. Thank God! Thank God!"

As I saw my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, whom I had so long mourned as dead, coming toward me in Lillian Underwood's living room, I stumbled to my feet, and, with no thought of spectators, or of anything save the fact that the best friend I had ever known had come back to me, I rushed into his arms, and clung to him wildly, sobbing out all the heartache and terror that had been mine since Dicky had left me in so cruel and mysterious a manner.

I felt as a little child might that had been lost and suddenly caught sight of its father or mother. The awful burden that had been mine lifted at the very sight of Jack's pale face smiling down at me. I knew that someway, somehow, Jack would straighten everything out for me.

"There, there, Margaret." Jack's well-remembered tones, huskier, weaker by far than when I had last heard them, soothed me, calmed me. "Everything's going to come out all right. I'll see to it all. Sit down, and let me hear all about it."

There was an indefinable air of embarrassment about him which I could not understand at first. Then I saw beyond him the lovely flushed face of Katharine Sonnot, and in her eyes there was a faintly troubled look.

I read it all in a flash. Jack was embarrassed because I had so impetuously embraced him before Katherine. I withdrew myself from his embrace abruptly, and drew a chair for him near my own.

"Are you sure you are fully recovered?" I asked, and I saw Jack look wonderingly at the touch of formality in my tone.

"No, I cannot say that," he returned gravely, "but I am so much better off than so many of the other poor chaps who survived, that I have no right to complain. Mine was a body wound, and while I shall feel its effects on my general health for years, perhaps all my life, yet I am not crippled."

His tone was full of thankfulness, and all my pettiness vanished at the sudden, swift vision of what he must have endured. The next moment he had turned my thoughts into a new channel.

"Margaret," he said gravely, "I am terribly distressed to hear from Katherine that your husband has gone away in such a strange manner."

So she had already told him! The little pang of unworthy jealousy came back, but I banished it.

"Now, there must be no more time lost," he went on. "You have had no man to look after things for you, but remember now, your old brother, Jack, is on the job. First, I must know everything that occurred on that last day. Did you notice anything extraordinary in his demeanor on that last morning you saw him?"

This was the old Jack, going directly to the root of the matter, wasting no time on his own affairs or feelings, when he saw a duty before him. I felt the old sway of his personality upon me, and answered his questions as meekly as a child might have done.

"He was just the same as he had been every morning since my accident," I returned.

"H-m." Jack thought a long minute, then began again.

"Tell me everything that happened that day, every visitor you had; don't omit the most trifling thing," he commanded.

He listened attentively as I recalled Harry Underwood's visit, and Robert Gordon's. At my revelation that Robert Gordon had said he was my father, his calm, judicial manner broke into excitement.

"Your father!" he exclaimed, and then, after a pause; "I always knew he would come back some day. But go on. What happened when he told you he was your father?"

I went on with the story of my struggle with my own rancor against my father, of my conviction that I had heard my mother's voice urging my reconciliation with him, of my father's first embrace and kisses, even of the queer smothered sound like a groan and the slamming of a door which I had heard. Then I told him of my father's gift of money to me, which I had not yet touched, but I noticed that toward the last of my narrative Jack seemed preoccupied.

"Did your husband come home to Marvin at all that day?" he asked.

"No, he never came back from the city after he had once gone in, until evening."

"But are you sure that this day he did not return to Marvin?" he persisted. "How do you know?"

"Because no one saw him," I returned, "and he could hardly have come back without someone in the house seeing him."

He said no more, as Lillian and Katherine came up just then, and the conversation became general.

To my great surprise, I did not see him again after that first visit. Katherine explained to me that he had been called out of town on urgent business, but the explanation seemed to me to savor of the mysterious excitement that seemed to possess everybody around me.

Finally one morning, Lillian came to me, her face shining.

"I want you to prepare to be very brave, Madge," she said. "There is some one coming whom I fear it will tax all your strength to meet."

"Dicky!" I faltered, beginning to tremble.

"No, child, not yet," she said, her voice filled with pity, "but someone who has done you a great wrong, Grace Draper."



XLIII

"TAKE ME HOME"

"Grace Draper coming to see me!"

My echo of Lillian's words was but a trembling stammer. The prospect of facing the girl the thread of whose sinister personality had so marred the fabric of my marital happiness terrified me. Her message to me, posted in San Francisco, where Dicky was, flaunted its insolent triumph again before my eyes:

"She laughs best who laughs last."

That she had intended me to believe she was with Dicky, I knew, whether her boast were true or not. But how was it that she was coming to see me? Lillian put a reassuring hand upon my shoulder as she saw my face.

"Pull yourself together, Madge," she admonished me sharply. "Let me make this clear to you. Grace Draper is not in San Francisco now. Whether she has been, or what she knows about Dicky she has refused so far to say. She has finally consented to see you, however."

"But, how?" I murmured, bewildered.

"Do you remember the girl of whom Katherine spoke when she first came, the girl who moaned at night in the room next hers?"

"Oh, yes! And she was—?"

"Grace Draper. I do not know what made me think of the Draper when Katherine spoke of the girl, but I did, although I said nothing about it at the time. A little later, however, when the girl became really ill and Katherine was caring for her as a mother or a sister would have done, I told our little friend of my suspicion. Of course, Katherine watched her mysterious patient very carefully after that, and when she became ill enough to require a physician's services, Katharine managed it so that Dr. Pettit was called, and he recognized the girl at once.

"Ever since then, Katherine has been working on the substitute for honor and conscience which the Draper carries around with her—but she was hard as nails for a long time. She is terribly grateful to Katherine, however, as fond of her as she can be of anyone, and she has finally consented to come here. Don't anger her if you can help it."

When, a little later, Grace Draper and I faced each other, it was pity instead of anger that stirred my heart. The girl was inexpressibly wan, her beauty only a worn shadow of its former glory. But there was the old flash of defiant hatred in her eyes as she looked at me.

"Please don't flatter yourself that I have come here for your sake," she said, with her old smooth insolence. "But this girl here"—she indicated Katherine—"took care of me before she knew who I was. She just about saved my life and reason, too, when there was nobody else to care a whit whether I lived or died. Even my sister's gone back on me. So when I saw how much it meant to her to find out the truth about your precious husband, I promised her I'd come and tell you the little I knew."

She drew a long breath, and went on.

"In the first place, I didn't go to San Francisco with Dicky Graham, although I'm glad if my little trick made you think so for awhile. I didn't go anywhere with him except into a cafe for a few minutes, the day he left New York. It was just after he got back from Marvin, and he was pouring drinks into himself so fast that he was pretty hazy about what had happened, but I made a pretty shrewd guess as to his trouble."

She turned to me, and I saw with amazement that contempt for me was written on her face.

"You!" she snarled, "with your innocent face, and your high and mighty airs, you must have been up to something pretty disgraceful, to have your husband feel the way he did that day he started for San Francisco! He had to go out to Marvin unexpectedly that morning, almost as soon as he had arrived in the city. What or who he found there, you know best."

"Stop!" said Lillian authoritatively, and for a long minute the two women faced each other, Grace Draper defiant, Lillian, with all the compelling, almost hypnotic power that is hers when she chooses to exercise it.

The accusation which the girl had hurled at me stunned me as effectually as an actual missile from her hand would have done. What did she mean? And then, before my dazed brain could work itself back through the mazes of memory, there came the whir of a taxi in the street, an imperative ring of the bell, a tramp of masculine footsteps in the hall, and then—my husband's arms were around me, his lips murmuring disjointed, incoherent sentences against my cheek.

"Madge! Madge! little sweetheart!—no right to ask forgiveness—deserve to lose you forever for my doubt of you—been through a thousand hells since I left—"

Over Dicky's shoulder I saw Jack's dear face smiling tenderly, triumphantly, at me, realized that he must have started after Dicky as soon as he had heard my story of my husband's inexplicable departure—and the light for which I had been groping suddenly illuminated Grace Draper's words.

"So you saw my father embrace me that day!" I exclaimed, and at the words the face of the girl who had caused me so much suffering grew whiter, if possible, and she sank into a chair, as if unable to stand.

"Yes." A wave of shamed color swept my husband's face, his words were low and hurried. "But you must believe this one thing,—I had made up my mind to come back and beg your forgiveness, indeed, I was just ready to start for New York, when your cousin found me and brought me the true explanation of things.

"I—I—couldn't stand it any longer without you, Madge. I must have been mad to go away like that. You won't shut me out altogether, will you, sweetheart?"

I had thought that if Dicky ever came back me I should make him suffer a little of what he had compelled me to endure. But, as I looked from the white, drawn face of the girl, who I was sure still counted Dicky's love as a stake for which no wager was too high, to the anxious faces of the dear friends who had helped to bring him back to me, I could do nothing but yield myself rapturously to the clasp of my husband's arms.

"I couldn't have stood it much longer without you, Dicky," I whispered, and then, forgetting everything else in the world but our happiness, my husband's lips met mine in a long kiss of reconciliation.

A half choked little cry startled me, and I saw Grace Draper get to her feet unsteadily and start for the door, with her hands outstretched gropingly before her, almost as if she were blind. Katherine Sonnot hurried to her, and then Jack spoke to me for the first time since he had brought Dicky into the room.

"Good-by, Margaret, until I see you again," he said hurriedly. "Good-by, Dicky, I must go to Katherine."

"Good-by, old chap," Dicky returned heartily, and in his tone I read the blessed knowledge that my cherished dream had come true, that my husband and my brother-cousin were friends at last. And from the look upon Jack's face as his eyes met Katharine's, I knew that he, too, had found happiness.

I saw the trio go out of the room, the girl who had wronged me, and the friends who had helped me. Then my eyes turned to the truest, most loyal friend of all, Lillian, who stood near us, frankly weeping with joy. I put out my hand to her, and drew her also into Dicky's embrace. How long a cry it had been since the days when I was wildly jealous of her old friendship with Dicky!

"Will you come away with me for a new honeymoon, sweetheart?" Dicky asked, tenderly, after awhile, when Lillian had softly slipped away and left us alone together.

Into my brain there flashed a sudden picture of the homely living room in the Brennan house at Marvin, with the leaping fire, which I knew Jim would have for us whenever we came, with Katie's impetuous welcome. I turned to Dicky with a passionate little plea.

"Oh! Dicky," I said earnestly, "take me home."

THE END