and breathing fast
gasped in low-voiced broken tones, "Don't stare at me--I am not a
fool--I am--I am--only the fool of a great love. You don't know what it
means. My God! I have no child--James Penhallow is to me children,
husband--all--everything." She stood still, wide-eyed, staring down the
garden paths, a wonder of yearning tenderness in her face, with Rivers's
letter in her hand.

"Read your letter, Aunt."

"Yes--yes--I forgot it." She read it, and said, "It only confirms the
telegram."

The storm of passionate emotion was over. Leila amazed and fearful of
results--twice seen before--watched her. "You have seen," she said in a
low voice, "the soul of a great love laid bare. May you too some day, my
child, love as I do! Have no fear for me--I see it in your looks. Come
in--I have to see to things--I have to give some orders--there will be
much to do." She was at once quiet, and composedly led the way into the
house, the astonished girl following her.

In the hall Mrs. Penhallow said, "I fear, dear, I have left too much of
the management of the house to you--of late, I mean. What with the farms
and stables, I am not surprised that things have not been quite as James
would desire. I am going to relieve you a little. I suppose the stables
are all right."

"They are," returned Leila, feeling hurt. Her aunt had not been in the
kitchen or given an order for nearly a month, and house, farm and
stables, had been by degrees allowed to slip into Leila's well-trained
and competent hands. Meanwhile Ann Penhallow had gradually failed in
health and lost interest in duties which had been to her, as Rivers said,
what social pleasures were to some women. She yielded by degrees and not
without resistance to mere physical weakness, and under the emotional
stress of war, and above all the absence of the man on whom she depended,
had lapsed to McGregor's dismay into a state of mind and body for which
he had no remedy.

Every physician of large experience must have seen cases of self-created,
unresisted invalidism end with mysterious abruptness and the return of
mental, moral and physical competence, under the influence of some call
upon their sense of duty made by calamity, such as an acute illness in
the household, financial ruin, or the death of a husband. The return of a
wounded man and the need to care for him acted thus upon Ann Penhallow.

Leila looked on in surprise. Her aunt's astounding indifference to the
results of