ose for ourselves sometimes involves others.
The death of that unhappy woman and the father of her child left an
innocent creature at the mercy of sordid, evil hands."

"In evil hands, indeed, judging by--what you have told me."

"I would give much to be able to trace her." There was a heavy line
between his eyebrows, and his eyes were stern and sad. "It would be
something to know what had become of her, even if she were dead, or worse
than dead."

A violent, sudden scarlet dyed her to the edge of the white starched coif.
Her mouth writhed as though words were bursting from her; but she nipped
her lips together, and controlled her eyes. And still her silence angered
and defied him. He went on:

"If I seem to you to harp painfully upon this subject, pardon me. You have
my word that, without encouragement from you, I will not refer to it after
to-day." His close-clipped brown moustache was straightened by the tension
of the muscles of his mouth. He passed his palm over it, and continued
speaking without moving a muscle of his face or taking his searching eyes
from the Mother's.

"The name of the young lady who is so fortunate as to be your ward, and
even more, the striking likeness I spoke of just now, have led me to hope
that my dead friend's daughter was led by a Hand, in whose Divine guidance
I humbly believe, to find the very shelter he would have chosen for her.
Pray answer, acquitting me in your own mind of persistence or
inquisitiveness. Am I right or wrong?"

She might have been a statue of black marble, with wimple and face and
hands of alabaster, she stood so breathlessly still. Her heart did not
seem to beat; her blood was stagnant in her veins. She felt no faintness.
Her observation was unnaturally keen, her mind dazzlingly clear; her brain
seemed to work with twice its ordinary power. She thought. He glanced at
the shabby watch he wore upon the steel lip-strap, and waited. She was
aware of the action, though she never turned her head. She was weighing
the question, to tell or not to tell? Her soul hung poised like a seagull
in the momentary shelter of a giant wave-crest. Another moment, and the
battle with the raging gale and the driving halberds of the sleet would
begin again.

She looked again towards Lynette, and in an instant her purpose
crystallised, her line of action was made clear. She saw a little bunch of
wax-belled white heath fall from the girl's scarlet belt in the act of
rising. She saw