e same
smile was on her lips as she added, slowly, sneeringly:

"But you will never know, will you, Madgie dear, just how much of what
I said was false and how much true?"

Her eyes held mine a moment longer, and the malignance in their
feverish brightness frightened me. Then she closed them wearily.

As I turned away from her bedside I realized that she had prophesied
only too truthfully. There would be times in my life when I would
believe Dicky only. But I was also afraid there would be others when
her words would come back to me with intensified power to sear and
scar.

XXX

THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED

Grace Draper did not die. Thanks to the assiduous care of Dr. Pettit
and the two trained nurses Dicky had provided she gradually struggled
up from the "valley of the shadow of death" in which she had lain to
convalescence.

As soon as she was able to travel she went to the home of the relative
in the country whom she had visited in the summer. One of the nurses
went with her to see that she was settled comfortably, and upon
returning reported that she was getting strong fast, and in a month or
two more would be her usual self again.

Neither Dicky nor I had seen her before she left. Indeed, Dicky
appeared to have taken an uncontrollable aversion to the girl since
her attempt to kill him and herself and disliked hearing even her name
mentioned. As for me, I had a positive dread of ever looking into the
girl's beautiful false face again.

It was Lillian who made all the necessary arrangements both for the
girl's stay in her own home and her transfer to the country.

But between the time of my mother-in-law's arrival at our house in
Marvin and the departure of Grace Draper from Lillian's home lay an
interval of a fortnight in which what we all considered the miraculous
happened. My mother-in-law grew to like Lillian Underwood.

For the first three or four days after the ultimatum which I had given
her that she should respect our guests if she stayed in our house she
was like a sulky child. She kept to her room, affecting fatigue, and
demanding her meals be carried up to her by Katie.

Of course Lillian and Harry wanted to go away at once, but Dicky and
I overruled them. I was resolved to see the thing through. I felt
that if my mother-in-law did not yield her prejudices at this time she
never would, and that I would simply have to go through the same thing
again later.

Lillian saw the force of my