rested him.

"My _grandmother_!" she exclaimed.

"Your Aunt Marianna," he amended, flushing. But their eyes did not move
as they stared at each other.

A thousand remembered trifles flashed through Norma's whirling brain; a
thousand little half-stilled suspicions leaped to new life. She had
accepted the suggested kinship in childish acquiescence, but doubt was
aflame now, once and for all. The man knew that there was no further
evading her.

"Chris, do you know anything about me?" she asked, directly.

"Yes, I think--I know everything," he answered, after a second's
hesitation.

Norma looked at him steadily. "Did you know my father and mother?" she
demanded, presently, in an odd, tense voice.

There was another pause before Chris said, slowly:

"I have met your father. But I knew--I know--your mother."

"You _know_ her?" The world was whirling about Norma. "Is Aunt Kate my
mother?" she asked, breathing hard.

"No. I don't know why you should not know. You call her Aunt Annie,"
Chris said.

Norma's hands dropped to her sides. She breathed as if she were
suffocating.

"_Aunt Annie!_" she whispered, in stupefaction.

And she turned and walked a few steps blindly, her eyes wide and vacant,
and one hand pressed to her cheek. "My God!--my God!" he heard her say.

"Annie eloped when she was a girl," Chris began presently, when she was
dazedly walking on again. "She was married, and the man deserted her.
She was ill, in Germany----But shall I talk now? Would you rather not?"

"Oh, no--no! Go on," Norma said, briefly.

"Alice was the first to guess it," Christopher pursued. "Her sister
doesn't know it, or dream it!"

"Aunt Annie doesn't! She does not know that I'm her own daughter!... But
what _does_ she think?"

"She supposes that her baby died, dear. I'm sorry to tell you, Norma,
but I couldn't lie to you! You'll understand everything, now--why your
grandmother wants to make it all up to you----"

"Does Leslie know?" Norma demanded, suddenly, from a dark moment of
brooding.

"Nobody knows! Your Aunt Kate, your grandmother, Alice, and I, are
absolutely the only people in the world! And Norma, _nobody else must
know_. For the sake of the family, for everyone's sake----"

"Oh, I see that!" she answered, quickly and impatiently. And for awhile
she walked on in silence, and apparently did not hear his one or two
efforts to recommence the conversation. "Aunt Annie!" she said once,
half aloud. And later sh