't understand Mary. After
your brother Henry died, when we insisted that Mary come and live with
us, it seemed wicked to leave her in that great house alone--and we have
no children. Now, there are times I am almost sorry we did it. It isn't
that I want to criticise Mary"--noticing her husband's look of
surprise--"I know she loves us both and yet--well, I have the feeling
that we don't really know her. The intimacy I had longed for hasn't
developed. She seems to live a part of her time in another world than
ours." She broke off again, laughing nervously. "Do you know," she said,
"I sometimes have the feeling that Mary lives a sort of double
life--nothing evil, you know--but uncanny. She's not unkind nor lacking
in affection for either of us, but often when we are together it seems to
me that her mind is miles away."

"Queer, eh?" said Mr. Randall, sympathetically. "Well, her father was
like that."

"It's not strange if she is like her father," charged Mrs. Randall. "He
brought her up like a boy. After her mother died she was more like a chum
to him than a daughter."

Lucas Randall became meditative.

"The church work, now," he asked, "does she seem interested?"

"At first I think she was. I took her on some of my regular poor people
calls. She seemed interested--too interested. Why, one day I lost her in
a tenement on Kosciusko street. I had to come home without her, half wild
with anxiety. She rushed in an hour later and when I questioned her as to
where she had been she replied that she had found a poor Scotch family
and had been so interested that she had forgotten me. 'Forgotten'--that's
the very word she used. She said she had been 'seeking the causes of
poverty.' I told her poverty came from people being poor, but that did
not seem to satisfy her. She asked me why they were poor. I answered that
often it was because they were shiftless. 'Not always,' she replied,
'these Scotch people, aunt, dear, were strangely like you and me.' She
spoke as if I were the one who did not understand."

"And since then?"

"Well, she has seemed to prefer going alone." Mrs. Randall paused on the
verge of a new confession. "Luke, dear," she went on hurriedly, "Mary
goes into sections of the city you have warned me not to visit!"

"Not the Levee?"

"Just that."

"Good Lord," ejaculated Mr. Randall, "surely she doesn't go alone?"

"Yes, except for her maid."

"That girl she took from the Refuge?"

"Anna."

"Where is Ma