into hers, he listened,
and yet she thought she detected his brain working behind his steadfast
gaze. It was as if he was searching for some hidden disease. "He knows
something," she said to herself, when the doctor moved to let someone
else take his place. "How much I can't tell. I'll get it all out of
sister."

Blunt and bluff Captain Holt, white-whiskered and white-haired now, but
strong and hearty, gave her another and a different shock. What his
first words would be when they met and how she would avoid discussing
the subject uppermost in their minds if, in his rough way, he insisted
on talking about it, was one of the things that had worried her greatly
when she decided to come home, for there was never any doubt in her
mind as to his knowledge. But she misjudged the captain, as had a great
many others who never looked beneath the rugged bark covering his heart
of oak.

"I'm glad you've come at last," he said gravely, hardly touching her
hand in welcome, "you ought to have been here before. Jane's got a fine
lad of her own that she's bringin' up; when you know him ye'll like
him."

She did not look at him when she answered, but a certain feeling of
relief crept over her. She saw that the captain had buried the past and
intended never to revive it.

The stern look on his face only gave way when little Ellen came to him
of her own accord and climbing up into his lap said in her broken
English that she heard he was a great captain and that she wanted him
to tell her some stories like her good papa used to tell her. "He was
gray like you," she said, "and big," and she measured the size with her
plump little arms that showed out of her dainty French dress.

With Doctor John and Captain Holt out of the way Lucy's mind was at
rest. "Nobody else round about Yardley except these two knows," she
kept saying to herself with a bound of relief, "and for these I don't
care. The doctor is Jane's slave, and the captain is evidently wise
enough not to uncover skeletons locked up in his own closet."

These things settled in her mind, my lady gave herself up to whatever
enjoyment, compatible with her rapidly fading mourning, the simple
surroundings afforded, taking her cue from the conditions that
confronted her and ordering her conduct accordingly and along these
lines: Archie was her adopted nephew, the son of an old friend of
Jane's, and one whom she would love dearly, as, in fact, she would
anybody else whom Jane had br