u and I. Will you tell me now how you came--to
hate me so bitterly?"

Mahaly's eyes dropped. "I never! I tried to, but--I couldn't, Miss Kate.
You was--so kin' to me."

"Yes, I was kind. I meant to be. I liked you, and trusted you. I gave
you my children to nurse.--Mahaly, only once--no, twice--in my life have
I trusted people, and had them fail me."

"The other time was Mr. Bas," whispered the woman. "I knows. It
didn't--never do to trus'--Mr. Bas."

Her dying eyes followed Kate's to the picture, and dwelt upon it
wistfully.

Once more the lady changed the subject. "Will you tell me why you tried
to hate me, Mahaly?" She paused. "Was it because you were--jealous of
me?"

The reply had a certain dignity. "It ain't fitten--for a yaller gal--to
be jealous--of a w'ite pusson."

"Then, why?"

There was a silence. Gropingly the colored woman's hand went to a table
at her side, and held out to Kate a tintype photograph in a faded pink
paper cover. Kate looked at it. She saw Mahaly as she had been in the
days of her youth, comely and graceful; in her arms a small, beady-eyed
boy. The pride of motherhood was unmistakable.

"Your baby! Why, I never knew you had a baby." She looked closer, and
her voice softened. "A cripple, like my little Katherine. Poor little
fellow! Oh, Mahaly, did he die?"

There was a dull misery in the answer that went to her heart. "I dunno.
I couldn't--never fin' out."

"_You don't know?_"

"Mr. Bas done sent him away--when you was comin'. He was real kin'--to
him before, though he wa'n't never one--to have po'ly folks about, much.
But when you--was comin'--he done sent him away, an' he wouldn't never
tell me--whar to."

"Mahaly! _Why_ did he send him away?"

Kate had risen, in her horror of what she knew was coming.

"Bekase he looked--too much--like his--paw," said Mahaly, and she spoke
with pride....

Kate put her hands over her eyes. She remembered the sense of something
sinister that had come to her when she first saw Storm; recalled the
mystery which had hung about the mulatto girl, and which she had not
quite dared to probe; the innuendoes of old Liza, from the first her
ally and henchman; Mahaly's later passionate and hungry devotion to her
own children. She remembered the fate, too, of Basil's hound Juno, and
her mongrel pups.

"No wonder you hated me," she whispered, shuddering. "No wonder you
hated me! To think that even he could have done such a thing!--Oh, but,
Mahal