With this dictum Joscelyn went from Spring Valley. She clung to
Deborah and wept at parting, but Cyrus did not even say goodbye to
her. On the morning of her departure he went away on business and did
not return until evening.

* * * * *

Joscelyn went on the stage. Her aunt's influence and her mother's fame
helped her much. She missed the hard experiences that come to the
unassisted beginner. But her own genius must have won in any case. She
had all her mother's gifts, deepened by her inheritance of Morgan
intensity and sincerity ... much, too, of the Morgan firmness of will.
When Joscelyn Morgan was twenty-two she was famous over two
continents.

When Cyrus Morgan returned home on the evening after his
granddaughter's departure he told his wife that she was never to
mention the girl's name in his hearing again. Deborah obeyed. She
thought her husband was right, albeit she might in her own heart
deplore the necessity of such a decree. Joscelyn had disgraced them;
could that be forgiven?

Nevertheless both the old people missed her terribly. The house seemed
to have lost its soul with that vivid, ripely tinted young life. They
got their married daughter's oldest girl, Pauline, to come and stay
with them. Pauline was a quiet, docile maiden, industrious and
commonplace--just such a girl as they had vainly striven to make of
Joscelyn, to whom Pauline had always been held up as a model. Yet
neither Cyrus nor Deborah took to her, and they let her go
unregretfully when they found that she wished to return home.

"She hasn't any of Josie's gimp," was old Cyrus's unspoken fault.
Deborah spoke, but all she said was, "Polly's a good girl, Father,
only she hasn't any snap."

Joscelyn wrote to Deborah occasionally, telling her freely of her
plans and doings. If it hurt the girl that no notice was ever taken of
her letters she still wrote them. Deborah read the letters grimly and
then left them in Cyrus's way. Cyrus would not read them at first;
later on he read them stealthily when Deborah was out of the house.

When Joscelyn began to succeed she sent to the old farmhouse papers
and magazines containing her photographs and criticisms of her plays
and acting. Deborah cut them out and kept them in her upper bureau
drawer with Joscelyn's letters. Once she overlooked one and Cyrus
found it when he was kindling the fire. He got the scissors and cut it
out carefully. A month later Deborah discovere