generous offer to adopt your little boy. I
have known that this was in their minds for some time, and have thought
it over day and night for weeks. In the worldly sense it would be the
best thing, no doubt. But this is a spiritual matter. The future of our
souls depends on how we meet the consequences of our conduct. And
painful, dreadful, indeed, as they must be, I am driven to feel that you
can only reach true peace by facing them in a spirit of brave humility.
I want you to think and think--till you arrive at a certainty which
satisfies your conscience. If you decide, as I trust you will, to come
back to me here with your boy, I shall do all in my power to make you
happy while we face the future together. To do as your aunt and uncle in
their kindness wish, would, I am sore afraid, end in depriving you of
the inner strength and happiness which God only gives to those who do
their duty and try courageously to repair their errors. I have
confidence in you, my dear child.

"Ever your most loving father,

"EDWARD PIERSON."

She read it through a second time, and looked at her baby. Daddy seemed
to think that she might be willing to part from this wonderful creature!
Sunlight fell through the plum blossom, in an extra patchwork quilt over
the bundle lying there, touched the baby's nose and mouth, so that he
sneezed. Noel laughed, and put her lips close to his face. 'Give you
up!' she thought: 'Oh, no! And I'm going to be happy too. They shan't
stop me:

In answer to the letter she said simply that she was coming up; and a
week later she went, to the dismay of her uncle and aunt. The old nurse
went too. Everything had hitherto been so carefully watched and guarded
against by Thirza, that Noel did not really come face to face with her
position till she reached home.

Gratian, who had managed to get transferred to a London Hospital, was
now living at home. She had provided the house with new maids against
her sister's return; and though Noel was relieved not to meet her old
familiars, she encountered with difficulty the stolid curiosity of new
faces. That morning before she left Kestrel, her aunt had come into her
room while she was dressing, taken her left hand and slipped a little
gold band on to its third finger. "To please me, Nollie, now that you're
going, just for the foolish, who know nothing about you."

Noel had suffered it with the thought: 'It's all very silly!' But now,
when the new maid was pouring out h