ays headstrong, Mademoiselle."

But, alone later on, her rosary on her knee, Mademoiselle wondered. If
youth were the indictment against Lily, was she not still young? It took
years, or suffering, or sometimes both, to break the will of youth and
chasten its spirit. God grant Lily might not have suffering.

It was Grace's plan to say nothing to Lily, but to go for her herself,
and thus save her the humiliation of coming back alone. All morning
housemaids were busy in Lily's rooms. Rugs were shaken, floors waxed
and rubbed, the silver frames and vases in her sitting room polished
to refulgence. And all morning Mademoiselle scolded and ran suspicious
fingers into corners, and arranged and re-arranged great boxes of
flowers.

Long before the time she had ordered the car Grace was downstairs,
dressed for the street, and clad in cool shining silk, was pacing the
shaded hall. There was a vague air of expectation about the old house.
In a room off the pantry the second man was polishing the buttons of
his livery, using a pasteboard card with a hole in it to save the fabric
beneath. Grayson pottered about in the drawing room, alert for the
parlor maid's sins of omission.

The telephone in the library rang, and Grayson answered it, while Grace
stood in the doorway.

"A message from Miss Lily," he said. "Mrs. Doyle has telephoned that
Miss Lily is on her way here."

Grace was vaguely disappointed. She had wanted to go to Lily with her
good news, to bring her home bag and baggage, to lead her into the house
and to say, in effect, that this was home, her home. She had felt that
they, and not Lily, should take the first step.

She went upstairs, and taking off her hat, smoothed her soft dark hair.
She did not want Lily to see how she had worried; she eyed herself
carefully for lines. Then she went down, to more waiting, and for the
first time, to a little doubt.

Yet when Lily came all was as it should have been. There was no doubt
about her close embrace of her mother, her happiness at seeing her. She
did not remove her gloves, however, and after she had put Grace in a
chair and perched herself on the arm of it, there was a little pause.
Each was preparing to tell something, each hesitated. Because Grace's
task was the easier it was she who spoke first.

"I was about to start over when you telephoned, dear," she said. "I--we
want you to come home to us again."

There was a queer, strained silence.

"Who wants me?" Lil