question on your word of honor not to tell
Dicky what I am going to tell you," she said. "It is something he
suspects, but which I would never confirm."

She paused expectantly. "Upon honor, of course," I answered simply.

She rose and moved swiftly toward one of the built-in bookcases. I saw
that she put her hand upon one of the sections and pulled upon it. To
my astonishment it moved toward her, and I saw that behind it was a
cleverly constructed wall safe. She turned the combination, opened the
door and took from the safe an inlaid box which, as she came toward
me, I saw was made of rare old woods.

She sat down again in the big chair and looked at the box musingly,
tenderly. I leaned forward expectantly. Again I had the sense of
tragedy near me.

Drawing the key from her dress she opened the box and took from it a
miniature, gazed at it a minute, and then handed it to me.

"Oh, Mrs. Underwood," I exclaimed. "How exquisite."

The miniature was of the most beautiful child I had ever seen, a tiny
girl of perhaps two years. She stood poised as if running to meet one,
her baby arms outstretched. It was a picture to delight or break a
mother's heart.

I looked up from the miniature to the face of the woman who had handed
it to me.

"Yes," she answered my unspoken query, "my little daughter; my only
child. She is the price I paid for Dicky's immunity from the scandal
which the unjust man that I called husband brought upon me."

My first impulse was one of horror-stricken sympathy for her. Then
came the reaction. A flaming jealousy enveloped me from head to foot.

"How she must have loved Dicky to do this for him!" The thought beat
upon my brain like a sledge hammer.

"Don't think that, my dear, for it isn't true." I had not spoken, but
with her almost uncanny ability to divine the thoughts of other people
she had fathomed mine. "I was always fond of Dicky, but I never was in
love with him."

"Then why did you make such a sacrifice?" I stammered.

"Why! There was absolutely no other way," she said, opening her
wonderful eyes wide in amazement that I had not at once grasped her
point of view. "Dicky was absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing, but
through a combination of circumstances of which I shall tell you, my
husband had gathered a show of evidence which would have won him the
divorce if it had been presented."

"He bargained with me: I to give up all claim to the baby. He to
withdraw Dicky's name, and