sed with one single scruple--it's the way of the world. I
took it. I paid for it. Only God knows how dearly I paid; but Adam, if
you love me, stand by me now. Let me have this eleventh hour
happiness, with no alloy. Anything I feel for your Uncle Robert has
nothing in the world to do with my being your mother; with you being my
son. Kiss me, and tell me you're glad, Adam."

Adam rose up and put his arms around his mother. All his resentment
was gone. He was happy as he could be for his mother, and happier than
he ever before had been for himself.

The following afternoon, Kate took the car and went to see Agatha
instead of husking corn. She dressed with care and arrived about three
o'clock, leading Poll in whitest white, with cheeks still rosy from her
afternoon nap. Agatha was sitting up and delighted to see them. She
said they were the first of the family who had come to visit her, and
she thought they had come because she was thinking of them. Then she
told Kate about her illness. She said it dated from father Bates
stroke, and the dreadful days immediately following, when Adam had
completely lost self-control, and she had not been able to influence
him. "I think it broke my heart," she said simply. Then they talked
the family over, and at last Agatha said: "Kate, what is this I hear
about Robert? Have you been informed that Mrs. Southey is back in
Hartley, and that she is working every possible chance and using
multifarious blandishments on him?"

Kate laughed heartily and suddenly. She never had heard
"blandishments" used in common conversation. As she struggled to
regain self-possession Agatha spoke again.

"It's no laughing matter," she said. "The report has every ear-mark of
verisimilitude. The Bates family has a way of feeling deeply. We all
loved Nancy Ellen. We all suffered severely and lost something that
never could be replaced when she went. Of course all of us realized
that Robert would enter the bonds of matrimony again; none of us would
have objected, even if he remarried soon; but all of us do object to
his marrying a woman who would have broken Nancy Ellen's heart if she
could; and yesterday I took advantage of my illness, and TOLD him so.
Then I asked him why a man of his standing and ability in this
community didn't frustrate that unprincipled creature's vermiculations
toward him, by marrying you, at once."

Slowly Kate sank down in her chair. Her face whitened and then g