s that he was dead
and that the trust fund had been transferred to a firm of lawyers,
though I wasn't given the name of the lawyers. That doesn't make any
difference since she's getting the money just the same."

"What was your pal's name, Joe?"

"Jimmie Carlisle."

The Duchess had been certain what this name would be, but nevertheless
she could not repress a start.

"What's the matter?" Joe asked sharply. "Did you know him?"

"Not in those days," said the Duchess, recovering her even tone. "Though
I got to know him later. By the way," she added casually, "did Jimmie
Carlisle have any children of his own?"

"Not before I went away. He wasn't even married."

There was now no slightest doubt left in the Duchess's mind. Maggie was
really Joe Ellison's daughter.

Joe Ellison went on, the glow of his sunken eyes becoming yet more
exalted. He was almost voicing his thoughts to himself alone, for
his friendship with the Duchess was so old that her presence was no
inhibition. His low words were almost identical in substance with what
Larry had told--a summary of what had come to be his one great hope and
dream, the nearest thing he had to a religion.

"Somewhere, in a nice place, my girl is now growing up like her mother.
Clean of everything I was and I knew. She must be practically a woman
now. I don't know where she is--there's now no way for me to learn.
And I don't want to know. And I don't want her ever to know about me.
I don't ever want to be the cause of making her feel disgraced, or of
dragging her down from among the people where she belongs."

The Duchess gave no visible sign of emotion, but her ancient
heart-strings were set vibrating by that tense, low-pitched voice. She
had a momentary impulse to tell him the truth. But just then the Duchess
was a confusion of many conflicting impulses, and the balance of their
strength was for the moment against telling. So she said nothing.

Their talk drifted back to commonplaces, and presently Joe Ellison
went away. The Duchess sat motionless at her desk, again
thinking--thinking--thinking; and when Joe Ellison was back in his
gardener's cottage at Cedar Crest and was happily asleep, she still sat
where he had left her. During her generations of looking upon life from
the inside, she had seen the truth of many strange situations of which
the world had learned only the wildest rumors or the most respectable
versions; but during the long night hours, perhaps because