her hand, she understood; understood what Georgy had offered to
share with her, what the taciturn secretiveness of Celeste meant. She
went in through the parlour to her mother's room, from which of late
she had been so much shut out.

"Molly," she said, her voice sounding strange to herself, as she held
out the paper open.

Molly, risen on her pillow, looked at it, at her, her eyes growing
big. She was frightened, and cowered a little, crumpling some letters
in her lap.

"Don't look at me like that, Malise," she said. "I've some of the
money you gave me left--I'll help to pay it."

That she was afraid only because of the bill!

"Oh--" Alexina breathed it rather than uttered it.

Molly, risen from her elbow to sitting posture, was looking at her
with big, miserable eyes, her throat, so slight and pretty, swelling
with the sobs coming.

But the other came first, and with it came the terror. "Malise,
Malise, hold me; hold me. I'm afraid!"

Celeste was out.

Alexina, holding her mother, could reach the bell, and rang it, again
and again.

"Oh," she said to the boy when he came; "get a doctor."

"What one?" he asked.

Alexina remembered Dr. Ransome.

Then she sat and fed ice to Molly and tried to keep her still. It is a
fearful thing to feel the close, clinging touch of a person we are
shrinking from. It was a hot, drowsy afternoon. The clock on the
parlour mantel ticked with maddening reiteration. It seemed hours
before Dr. Ransome came. Then a moment later Celeste returned. Molly
flung her arms out to the old woman.

"He's dead, mammy," she wailed; "Jean's dead; the letters came after
you went--and I'm afraid, I'm afraid of it, I'm afraid to die!"

It was to Celeste Molly had to tell it. The daughter listened with a
sudden resentment towards Celeste.

Molly was not going to be better right at once, and Alexina and Dr.
Garrard Ransome had many opportunities for talk. She stopped him in
the parlour, as he was going, one morning. It had been on her mind for
a long time to ask him something. "It's odd, your name being Ransome,"
she said. "Mrs. Leroy, who used to live where you do, had been a Miss
Ransome."

"She's my cousin Charlotte," said the young fellow; "that's how my
mother came to fancy living where we do, when we came down from
Woodford to Louisville. She used to visit the Leroys there you see."

"Oh," said Alexina, "really? They were very good to me."

The blue eyes of the doctor were regardi