ed at last.

Suddenly there arose the tall image of Doctor John, with his frank,
tender face. What would he think of it, and how, if he questioned her,
could she answer him? Then there came to her that day of parting in
Paris. She remembered Lucy's willingness to give up the child forever,
and so cover up all traces of her sin, and her own immediate
determination to risk everything for her sister's sake. As this last
thought welled up in her mind and she recalled her father's dying
command, her brow relaxed. Come what might, she was doing her duty.
This was her solace and her strength.

"Cruel, cruel people!" she said to Martha, relaxing her hands. "How can
they be so wicked? But I am glad it is I who must take the brunt of it
all. If they would treat me so, who am innocent, what would they do to
my poor Lucy?"

CHAPTER X

A LATE VISITOR

These rumors never reached the doctor. No scandalmonger ever dared talk
gossip to him. When he first began to practise among the people of
Warehold, and some garrulous old dame would seek to enrich his visit by
tittle-tattle about her neighbors, she had never tried it a second
time. Doctor John of Barnegat either received the news in silence or
answered it with some pleasantry; even Ann Gossaway held her peace
whenever the doctor had to be called in to prescribe for her
oversensitive throat.

He was aware that Jane had laid herself open to criticism in bringing
home a child about which she had made no explanation, but he never
spoke of it nor allowed anyone to say so to him. He would have been
much happier, of course, if she had given him her confidence in this as
she had in many other matters affecting her life; but he accepted her
silence as part of her whole attitude toward him. Knowing her as he
did, he was convinced that her sole incentive was one of loving
kindness, both for the child and for the poor mother whose sin or whose
poverty she was concealing. In this connection, he remembered how in
one of her letters to Martha she had told of the numberless waifs she
had seen and how her heart ached for them; especially in the hospitals
which she had visited and among the students. He recalled that he
himself had had many similar experiences in his Paris days, in which a
woman like Jane Cobden would have been a veritable angel of mercy.

Mrs. Cavendish's ears were more easily approached by the gossips of
Warehold and vicinity; then, again she was always curious over